Oh look, something Obama isn’t good at . . . optics

James Taranto column:  "[Barack] Obama had always had a high estimation of his ability to cast and run his operation," the New York Times's Jodi Kantor wrote in her 2012 book, "The Obamas" (quoted here by National Review's Jim Geraghty). "I think I could probably do every job on the campaign better than the people I'll hire to do it," then-Sen. Obama told job interviewee David Plouffe in 2006. "I think I'm a better speechwriter than my speechwriters," he told another job candidate, Patrick Gaspard. "I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I'll tell you right now that I'm gonna think I'm a better political director than my political director"--namely Patrick Gaspard.

In the 68th month of his presidency, Obama says he has found something he's not good at. "Part of this job is . . . the theater of it," he told Chuck Todd, the new host of NBC's "Meet the Press." "Well, it's not something that always comes naturally to me. But it matters. And I'm mindful of that."

The comment was part of the president's answer to the following question from Todd: "I've got to ask, so during that vacation, you made the statement on [James] Foley"--the American journalist who'd just been beheaded by ISIS--"you went and golfed. Do you want that back?" (Meaning: Do you regret it?)

After complaining about being "followed everywhere" and wishing for a "vacation from the press," Obama meandered toward an affirmative answer: "Because the possibility of a jarring contrast given the world's news, there's always going to be some tough news somewhere, it's going to be there. But there's no doubt that after having talked to the families, where it was hard for me to hold back tears listening to the pain that they were going through after the statement that I made, that I should've anticipated the optics."

Wall Street Journal, Best of the Web, September 8, 2014

My opinion: he’s culturally and emotionally tone deaf. When it comes to Muslims, even those who behead Americans, he only can see “extremists.”  When it comes to anything dealing with the military, even elderly sick veterans, he is deaf and blind.

There is only one little difference between these two crooks

Nixon accepted the responsibility and did the honorable thing.  Obama knows nothing of honor, patriotism, honesty, hard work, or history.

My friends and readers could say this about me. . .and do

“When I read your constant barrages aimed at the first black president, I think to myself, "Doesn't [Norma], the devout Christian, understand what it took to get to this place? And where would [Norma] have been in the years of the freedom struggle that finally eventuated in some measure of equality for African-Americans and even a black president?" Isn't there some way you can temper your attacks on Obama with this history in mind?. . . "The presidency of an African-American is a dramatic symbol of the advances in the struggle for human rights in this country so long denied to black citizens. Unless you have a record deep in the civil rights struggle, relentless attacks on this symbol will be seen as giving aid and comfort to, if not an expression of, the latent racism that is still much with us in this country. That is why criticisms of this president-as-symbol are not to be made in the same way as the conventional political fisticuffs."

But it was said about another writer critical of this president. . . someone named Pete who insists on judging the president on his actions and knowledge, his political and economic leadership,  not the low expectations and double standards of liberal supporters and the American media. 

If John McCain, a great patriot and war hero, had won in 2008 and took the same downward path,  reversed his promises and then told lies, I would still be writing a blog about the deficit, the czars, expanding the war into more middle east countries, the over regulation of the health and energy industries, the strange reasoning of the Buffett fair tax, even his narcissism if it jumped out in every public appearance.  And if McCain’s wife (the second one) who is quite pretty for her age appeared in Las Vegas in a crotch exposing skirt disgracing the office of FLOTUS, I’d mention it here.

http://www.eppc.org/publications/pubID.4713/pub_detail.asp

Henry Clay ran for president 5 times and lost each time

He also served in the Senate before he was 30 (the age stated in the Constitution). However, he's an important American statesman. The Contenders starts tomorrow night on C-SPAN with the story of Clay.

C-SPAN The Contenders

Why the Tea Party can't trust the Republican Party

President Johnson, a Democrat, declared a war on poverty, and poverty won (NYT declares War on Poverty lost, 1999). I remember reading the book by Michael Harrington in the 1960s that supposedly started that war. However, President Nixon, a Republican, was even more liberal than Johnson. He tripled anti-poverty spending, and promoted "The New Federalism" giving us the huge environmental regulatory agencies which strangle growth to this day. How does that help the poor? Under Nixon, Medicare spending rose by 246% and he took us off the gold standard. The two Bushes were Republicans but they were not conservatives. Clinton's increase in the Federal budget was 12%. George W. Bush's was 42%.

Also, don't trust racialist labels. Nixon wasn't a racist (although he didn't like gays), but Johnson was. Before he became President, Johnson had voted against virtually every bill that wouldn't have helped blacks. Both hurt the African American family by encouraging men to leave the home through various "poverty" programs like AFDC. Despite his spending habits, George W. Bush with his stance on abortion and stem cell research, at least was morally and ethically for the black community which with only about 14% of the population is having 42% of the abortions, including the late term horror that we've recently witnessed in Philadelphia.

Since 1961, with the exception of Ronald Reagan, we've only had Progressive Presidents--JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Bush I and II--men who grew the government and broke their promises. If the Tea Party-supported new members of Congress don't want to get Beltway Fever and eat pork, they need to distrust the Republicans, and ignore the Democrats, toss out the word "bipartisanship" and "civility" and get down to the business of America, which is business.

The Carter-Obama Comparisons

This is a "kiss and tell" entry. I adored President Jimmy Carter, and wrote him a fan letter after he was turned out to pasture by Reagan (and I received a thank you note which I kept on my refrigerator for at least a year). However, at first I thought he was a wonderful ex-president going about inspiring people with authentic Christian good works (Habitat for Humanity). However, as he got older and more restless he began setting a really bad example for future Democratic ex-presidents and ex-vice presidents. (This doesn't seem to be an affliction of Republicans.) He began to act as though he still mattered to the American public, that people cared what he thought. That said, I still admire a man who will defend his record while working out of a cramped apartment with a Murphy bed rather than living it up in high style the way other Democrats do. Old clips seen on 60 minutes a few days ago, however, did bring some unfortunate comparisons with my least favorite president, Barack Obama.

"Princeton University historian Sean Wilentz, for instance, told Fox News in August 2008 that Mr. Obama's "rhetoric is more like Jimmy Carter's than any other Democratic president in recent memory." Syndicated columnist Jonah Goldberg noted more recently that Mr. Obama, like Mr. Carter in his 1976 campaign, "promised a transformational presidency, a new accommodation with religion, a new centrism, a changed tone."

But within a few months, liberals were already finding fault with his rhetoric. "He's the great earnest bore at the dinner party," wrote Michael Wolff, a contributor to Vanity Fair. "He's cold; he's prickly; he's uncomfortable; he's not funny; and he's getting awfully tedious. He thinks it's all about him." That sounds like a critique of Mr. Carter.

I don't think Carter is the narcissist that Obama is, nor is he a Marxist, but he is a liberal, finger wagging whine. When I saw that 1970s clip of him lecturing the American public on their morals, it just sent a chill down my back. Excuse me if it sounds racist, but that was way too much blue-eyed, elder soul for this former fan.

John Fund: The Carter-Obama Comparisons Grow - WSJ.com

And to think this was written a year ago! It's only gotten worse

This piece was written before the enormously unpopular healthcare bill passed, against the wishes of 70% of Americans; before all the evidence was in on the failure of ARRA; before the military commander meltdown when we found out what they really think of him; before he drug his feet on the Gulf clean up and worsened the economy; before we learned from CBO and other economist left and right that his policies have failed; before it was clear he would never own up to his own decisions and would always blame Bush, or white people, or dumb Americans; before he and his wife took ridiculously (and separate) expensive vacations while urging others to conserve resources; before his dumb statements about the mosque that he later tried to walk back; and before the radical marxists who funded and supported him in 2008 left him high and dry.

"No narrative. Obama doesn't have a narrative. No, not a narrative about himself. He has a self-narrative, much of it fabricated, cleverly disguised or written by someone else. But this self-narrative is isolated and doesn't connect with us. He doesn't have an American narrative that draws upon the rest of us. All successful presidents have a narrative about the American character that intersects with their own where they display a command of history and reveal an authenticity at the core of their personality that resonates in a positive endearing way with the majority of Americans. We admire those presidents whose narratives not only touch our own, but who seem stronger, wiser, and smarter than we are. Presidents we admire are aspirational peers, even those whose politics don't align exactly with our own: Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Harry Truman, Ike, Reagan.

But not this president. It's not so much that he's a phony, knows nothing about economics, is historically illiterate, and woefully small minded for the size of the task-- all contributory of course. It's that he's not one of us. And whatever he is, his profile is fuzzy and devoid of content, like a cardboard cutout made from delaminated corrugated paper. Moreover, he doesn't command our respect and is unable to appeal to our own common sense. His notions of right and wrong are repugnant and how things work just don't add up. They are not existential. His descriptions of the world we live in don't make sense and don't correspond with our experience."

Read the entire account of Another Failed Presidency by Gregory Hunt.

Twiddle dum and Twiddle dee--"spending on things that matter"

Do you remember that phrase after the last election? "Now maybe we can spend money on things that matter," by rejoicing, teary Obama supporters. What a laugh. The welfare state grows no matter who is in office, sometimes more under Republicans, but definitely under the less-than-conservative two Bush presidencies. Once a human services program is in place, who controls the White House or Congress makes little difference in its growth.


"The most significant growth in Human Resources spending is attributable to Medicare and "Health Care Services," an OMB category dominated by Medicaid. Still using constant dollars, these two categories combined to account for 8% of Human Resources outlays under Kennedy and Johnson, 15% under Nixon and Ford, 17% under Carter, 21% under Reagan, 26% under George H.W. Bush, 31% under Clinton, and 34% under George W. Bush. Measure all the Human Services outlays from 1962 (the first year of more detailed OMB historical tables) through 2007 in constant dollars, and it turns out that Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security accounted for just under two-thirds of the total."

More interesting facts about the persistence of poverty and the corresponding growth of the welfare state at "Reforming Big Government."