October 14, 2009

Obama The Impotent: A Dangerous Delusion

By Matt Patterson

A meme is forming in the popular consciousness that Barack Obama is a do-nothing president.

Saturday Night Live recently poked fun at this image in a much-discussed skit, with comedian Fred Armisen as Obama admitting, "When you look at my record, it's very clear what I've done so far. And that is nothing." The ludicrous decision of the Nobel Committee to award the Peace Prize to Obama -- who had been ensconced in the White House a mere 12 days before the nomination deadline in February -- only solidified the image of Obama as more people-pleaser than policy-maven, more speech-giver than history-maker.

This meme is a dangerous fantasy: Obama is doing much, and much that is destructive to both our economic health and our national security.

The Obama administration has vowed to "reset" our relations with strategic adversaries like Russia -- a country which has been gobbling up and threatening its smaller democratic neighbors. Obama is equally proud of his "outstretched hand" to declared enemies like Iran, which for years provided the Iraqi insurgents with the munitions to kill American soldiers, and which recently has been shooting its own people in the streets. Meanwhile, loyal allies like Poland and the Czech Republic are sold out and left defenseless when Obama reneged on the long-planned deployment of anti-missile systems in Eastern Europe.

The administration's disastrous economic stewardship has destroyed the dollar. Countries all over the world are reportedly preparing to ditch the dollar as the reserve currency; experts warn of a global shift away from a dollar-centric world economy. Here at home, Obama's economy continues to hemorrhage jobs, with unemployment now nudging near 10 percent -- 17 percent if you count those who have given up looking for work altogether, or those who have had to take part-time work because they can't find full-time employment. Obama's budget and stimulus package, packed with pork and political paybacks, have exploded the deficit to a ruinous and record $1.4 trillion

Do nothing? This man is systematically taking a wrecking ball to our economy...and this before his planned government takeover of the health care and energy sectors. Do nothing? Obama has never met a tyrant he wouldn't appease, seemingly clueless to the lessons of history that such behavior puts us all in grave danger.

No, far from being a do-nothing president, Obama is in fact a busy body of the worst sort: He is bombing the moon instead of Iran's nuclear facilities; he deploys himself to Europe to help bring the Olympics to Chicago, but fails to deploy the troops necessary to win the war in Afghanistan. And it is our children who will pay the price for all of this -- they will live with a maniacal Islamist regime blackmailing the free world with nuclear weapons; they will struggle to pay this enormous and disgraceful debt that Obama is shoveling onto their backs.

Conservatives who believe that Obama is politically impotent are dangerously mistaken. Yes, the president has had some bumps along the road. But the delayed closing of Guantanamo, the August town hall uprisings; these are temporary, tactical victories at best.

Barack Obama may not get everything he wants, but make no mistake - his policies are statist in design, intent, and effect. Just because he won't achieve total success doesn't mean he can't cripple the Republic in the trying.

Matt Patterson is a National Review Institute Washington Fellow and the author of "Union of Hearts: The Abraham Lincoln & Ann Rutledge Story." His email is mpatterson.column@gmail.com