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Jewish World Review June 21, 2010 / 9 Tamuz 5770 Our Empty-Suit-in-Chief By Arnold Ahlert
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
"Some of the same folks who have been hollering and saying 'do something' are the same folks who, just two or three months ago, were suggesting that government needs to stop doing so much. Some of the same people who are saying the president needs to show leadership and solve this problem are some of the same folks who, just a few months ago, were saying this guy is trying to engineer a takeover of our society through the federal government that is going to restrict our freedoms."-- Barack Obama
It is hard to know whether this president isn't exactly the intellectual giant his supporters claim him to be, or if progressive ideology requires a certain level of willful stupidity--or outright lying--in order to maintain philosophical consistency.
Mr. Obama, whether you realize it or not, there is nothing remotely inconsistent in folks wanting the government to "do something" about a massive oil spill, even as they don't want that same government insinuating itself at an ever-increasing levels into their personal lives.
Your comment indicates that, at least for you, government is an all or nothing affair, as in "don't expect us to clean up an oil spill, if we can't nationalize GM, health insurance or the nation's energy sector." No doubt such sophistry plays well with your fellow ideologues, but there are those of us who, despite progressives' insistence that anyone who disagrees with you/them is a moron, who can see through such nonsensical pronouncements.
Here's what most Americans know about their federal government: it is a bloated, highly inept, hopelessly muddled maze of bureaucracy in which anything resembling a concise, coherent solution to a problem is virtually impossible to implement. They also realize that, despite this immutable reality, progressives want even more government--even as we hurtle towards national insolvency.
It is almost impossible to imagine the layer upon layer of arrogance, and negligence that brings us to the point where we are now. On one end we have government employees at the Mineral Management Services taking "gifts" (read bribes) from oil industry execs, watching porn on their computers (like their co-workers at the SEC) and using crystal meth. On the other, a president who bestowed a safety award on the blown out BP rig, and has refused to waive the Jones Act of 1920, which would allow foreign vessels to assist in the cleanup. That would be the same Jones Act president George W. Bush waived in order to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
In between? Sloth: does anyone seriously believe this administration was on the accident "from day one?" Bureaucratic ineptitude: at a recent presidential press conference, it became apparent that Mr. Obama didn't know whether Elizabeth Birnbaum, the top official in his oil-industy-monitoring agency, had resigned or been fired. And mountains upon mountains of red tape: governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Okaloosa county officials in Florida have both announced they can no longer abide the federal torpor that would allow their coastlines to get destroyed. The chairman of the Okaloosa County commission voiced the frustration felt by millions of Americans:
"We will do whatever it takes to protect our county's waterways and we're prepared to go to jail to do it."
Imagine the kind of bureaucracy that forces a man to subject himself to potential prosecution in order to save his county from ecological disaster. Oh, wait. You don't have to imagine it. It's what we have already.
The second half of the president's above statement is even more revealing: apparently wanting leadership in a time of crisis is acceptable only if one is willing to stop complaining about your radical leftist agenda.
Nice try, Mr. President, but it won't fly. There are times when leadership is supposed to transcend politics. For the overwhelming majority of Americans, this is one of those times. What it definitely isn' t is yet another "never let a crisis go to waste" opportunity to pass another job-killing, tax raising bill, aka cap-and-trade, against the wishes of that same majority.
Unfortunately, as your speech last Tuesday indicated, you couldn't resist--which is precisely why those same Americans realize that you are indeed trying to "engineer a takeover of our society through the federal government that is going to restrict our freedoms."
Again, despite your protest to the contrary, there is no inconsistency here.
Make no mistake, Mr. President. No reasonable person expected you to put on a deep-sea diving suit and plug the leak. But a genuine chief executive--as opposed to a man who seems to be presidential only when it doesn't interfere with his other activities--would have suspended the Jones Act and taken all the help he could get from other countries; would have established a clear chain of command between the government and BP; would have cut through the multi-agency, bureaucratic red tape that is still hampering the cleanup efforts; and would be far more involved in finding solutions to this problem--as opposed to assigning blame for it.
Perhaps the most disturbing part of your above statement is the fact that, in the end, it's once again all about you. And even without hearing it, the whine comes through loud and clear. It is a whine borne of arrogance, the idea that anyone who criticizes you only does so because they don't have the intellectual capacity to appreciate your superior abilities. It is the insouciant dismissal of their concerns because, as the above statement so amply implies, you consider them hypocritical for wanting government to "do something."
Nobody in their right mind wants government to do nothing, Mr. President. And if people are conflicted about which part of our morbidly obese bureaucracy they would do without, that isn't automatic evidence of hypocrisy. If anything, it's evidence that government has grown so large, that much of it has become literally unknowable to most Americans.
And not just regular Americans: there isn't a Congressman on Capitol Hill who could tell you everything contained in the health care bill they passed. That's the one Nancy Pelosi said they had to pass "so you could find out what's in it."
Americans are finding out what's in you, Mr. President, and what they're discovering isn't pretty: we have elected a detached, self-aggrandizing, incompetent to the highest office in the land. A man whose "knowledge" of the world bears a striking resemblance to that of a tenured academic, that sub-species of Americans who espouse all manner of theoretical "solutions" to our problems from insulated confines of college campuses--solutions that invariably crash and burn when applied to real people and real events. They are discovering a man who, absent a carefully cultivated charisma aided and abetted by a corrupt media, would have been revealed for the radical leftist, empty suit you truly are.
It remains to be seen whether America can survive four years of a community organizer masquerading as a president.
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© 2010, Arnold Ahlert |
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