WASTED OPPORTUNITY

The more I see of the Obama Presidency, the more I view it as a wasted opportunity. Regardless of what one may think of his political views, President Obama is very popular personally. All the polls have shown this consistently. He is glib, likeable, personable, a superb orator, and a great “rags to riches” success story. With all these positive attributes Mr. Obama has had and still does have a rare opportunity to unite various disparate groups of Americans and achieve greatness. Instead, he has done exactly the opposite He and his policies have been extremely divisive and have led us down the road toward economic and social disaster.

His wealth redistribution and nanny state policies and refusal or inability to compromise and forge coalitions with those who hold differing views have steadfastedly turned Democrats against Republicans, liberals against conservatives, poor against rich, minorities against whites, and women against men. To be sure, some or all of these animosities have always been present to a degree, but I do not recall another period in my lifetime when they have all been as extreme as they are now.

I could give many examples of this, but I will cite only one: the Sequestor. As I wrote yesterday, this was President Obama’s idea in the first place. Now that it has been turned around against him, rather than promulgating spending cuts in a judicious manner, he doing his best to cast blame on the GOP for it and make the sequestration as painful as possible to the American people. Want examples? (1) Last week he gave several “chicken little” speeches in which he delineated the dire consequences of sequestration, none of which has come to pass. In these speeches, he conveniently forgot to denote that sequestration was his much balleyhooed idea in the first place. (2) His Director of Homeland Security has reported, as a direct consequence of sequestration, the release of thousands of illegal aliens from ICE detention centers. These people had been detained because they are dangerous, and now if any of them commits another crime, guess who Mr. Obama will blame. (3) The D of HS also reported massive airport delays, whereas there have not been any. (4) Perhaps most outrageous of all, the White House cancelled all tours to save money. In reality, these tours are give by VOLUNTEERS, so this was also a sham. The only effect was to inconvenience thousands of Americans who were planning to tour the White House on their vacation. Reminds me of Chevy Chase and “Walley World.”

Why is Mr. Obama doing this? I believe he feels that if he can tarnish the GOP with this issue the Dems can win the House in the 2014 elections. In the meantime, the welfare of the country is secondary.

PREDICTION AND CONCLUSION

President Obama’s refusal or inability to compromise and bring people together will doom his legacy. As we know, Presidents view their legacy quite seriously. Most of them spend their entire second term building it. Typically, they move toward the middle and try to unify the people.

With the passage of time, historians, and Americans in general, often view presidencies very differently than they were viewed at the time. For example, most historians rank Presidents Lincoln and Truman in the top 5, yet they were unpopular and/or controversial during their presidencies. If Mr. O stays on the present course, which I believe he will, history will judge him quite harshly and deservedly so.