PrintFebruary 4, 2010
The leaderless left
During various forums over the past month, Barack Obama has insisted that he won't quit on passing health-care reform, improving the job market, and working more in a bi-partisan fashion to find solutions to the nation's problems. For many of us on the Right, we know these are just words because throughout the past year we've watched his actions. Ultimately, we could only question how seriously he takes his post as the president of the most of powerful nation in the world, and whether he has the qualities it takes to effectively hold that post. Well, his administration has finally confirmed what we've suspected all along.
The Washington Post reports:
White House spokesman Bill Burton said Obama will not delve into the minutiae of writing a health-care bill. "He's not a legislative technician," Burton said. "He's not going to get into the nitty-gritty of what the best way forward is at this point."
In this piece, which is about how Obama suggests that the GOP could play a role in the passing of health-care reform, Burton provides what's nothing short of a rather shocking admission. Basically, he's saying that the president won't take the time to help create the bill, and the reason he won't is because he can't. Over the past year, the president made at least 52 statements or addresses on health-care reform, so we know he can talk about it. After all, it's a signature part of his New Foundation, and ultimately he wants to use health-care reform to define his presidential legacy, one that has evaded many of his liberal predecessors. However, he's not going to even try to play any role into seeing that it comes to fruition, and consequently again the heavy-lifting will be left up to Congress.
After the State of the Union Address, we asked, has the president learned anything following the first year of his presidency? Once again we've found out he has not. As a result of leaving the legislative work solely up to his radical liberal cohorts in Congress, failure to produce has been the typical result. The major piece of legislation that has defined his presidency thus far was a worthless trillion-dollar pork-filled spending bill--disguised as stimulus and passed on a party-line vote-- while Cap-and-Trade, Card Check, financial regulation, and health-care reform have already died miserably or currently survive on life support.
Does he not wonder why?
With the full responsibility of crafting the minutiae of legislation, Congress has produced one piece of unpopular legislation after another. Due to not having any positive results to show for their efforts and their failure to pay attention to a weakening economy, the Left has watched the Republican Party take over in the Generic Congressional Polls and come out victorious in gubernatorial and senatorial elections in what were or had recently become strong blue states. If the president was the Left's leader, he would say "this is path to the promise land, follow me", but instead he's telling them "you lead me to where I want to go".
What will he do if he loses control of Congress?
While Obama has proven to be among many things: a speech giver, a fundraiser, an athlete, a traveler, a socialite, a celebrity, and a professor, he unfortunately lacks the most important label that he needs to possess--and with a Republican-led Congress he'd also have to find that bipartisanship that he has willfully eluded his entire political career. The president would do well to have a sit-down with his predecessor, who could teach him a thing or two about leadership, but that would require Obama to stop bashing him for more than a few minutes.
With that being said, I do believe that he won't quit until he has the America he envisions, he's already showed his hand of cards, but I believe he won't even try to play much of a role in its creation. The nitty-gritty will be left to the legislative branch and his trusted advisors, while Obama does what he does best, talk about the work he wants done by others, wait at the White House with pen in hand, then pat himself on the back after they're finished, and he's signed a dotted-line.
J.C. Arenas is a frequent contributor to American Thinker and welcomes your comments at jcarenas.com
