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Jewish World Review March 18, 2011 / 12 Adar II, 5771 President Takes a Bogey in a Time of Crisis By Jonah Goldberg
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | I've figured out Obama. He's not a Muslim, he's a golfer! That's a reference to For the record, while I think the media's special standard for Democratic presidents' recreation is outrageous, I really don't care that Obama plays a lot of golf. And he does play a lot. In his first year in office, Obama played more rounds of golf than That clarifies the golf stats, but not exactly in Obama's favor since we're still at war and the president has been nothing if not abundantly clear that he considers himself a greater moral exemplar than his predecessor. Perhaps it's Obama's conspicuous duffing that inspired "During the first two years," Brooks writes, the administration "hewed to Kennedy's seize-the-moment style. Now it seems to be copying the Eisenhower mood." Really? The "Eisenhower mood" is an awfully charitable way to describe a president who seems to be playing hooky when he's not hiding under his desk. The real problem for Obama is not that he likes his exercise. It's that he's acting like an employee who thinks he's too good for the job. Obama has always been offended by criticism, finding it somehow illegitimate to disagree with him. But his frustration is getting the better of him. The What an inconvenience it must be that the world looks to America for leadership when people are sacrificing their lives to fight tyranny. I don't remember reading that Eisenhower whined about Mao having it so much easier than he did. The Eisenhower mood was consonant with Eisenhower's statecraft. Ike was like a duck, gliding smoothly on the lake surface while working tirelessly below eye level to get where he needed to go. I'm open to evidence that Obama is working tirelessly behind the scenes, but where exactly does he think he's going? Yes, yes, I know he says we're on course to "win the future" with high-speed rail and enough windmills to lift the continental shelf. But what does any of this nonsense have to do with the turmoil around us? Calm is always good, but calmly checking out during a crisis is inexcusable. I do not subscribe to the mythology of the 1950s as an uncomplicated time. But it was a confident and prosperous time, and an avuncular war-hero president taking to the links sent the signal that the commander in chief had everything well in hand, not that he was fed up with the job. Obama's full-spectrum passivity simply is not the same thing, because we do not live in the same world. On the budget and questions of our long-term fiscal survival, he's AWOL. On The only area where he has shown sustained energy lately is fundraising. And even there, his pitch for support hinges on the fact that his middle name is still "Hussein." We should never take it for granted, the president told Democratic donors, "that a guy named Uh, OK. But I thought the important thing about his middle name was that it would help him improve relations with the Muslim world. How's that going? Obama added that he understands how easy it is to get "frustrated" with politics. Why, his wife had to stop watching cable TV it's gotten so bad. I bet Go ahead, Mr. President, play golf. But you should never take it for granted that you're a president playing golf, not a golfer playing president.
© 2006 TMS |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||||
