Don't blame President Obama

1. The law schools were adrift before he was born. Jurists were substituting opinion and passion for knowledge and precedent before he was an implanted embryo in his unmarried, teenage mother's womb. Whether it’s the 9th circuit or the Supremes, don’t blame the President for the mess lawyers have made. He’s a “constitutional lawyer” who’s been taught only what his professors knew.

2. Don’t blame Obama or any of the Presidents since Wilson for the failures of American education. John Dewey who pioneered social outcome, progressive education was born over 100 years before Obama. Progressive education was incubated and thrived at America’s universities, and then was passed on into the general education system to meet social and political goals. That social goals are more important than math or science or even western civilization can‘t even be put at the feet of Presidents Bush, Clinton or Carter, who created the Department of Education, not even Eisenhower who ordered the schools desegregated, so don‘t lay that expensive, overfed turkey on Obama‘s plate.

3. Don’t blame the President for moral and ethical failures of the church and family. The churches, pulpits and Sunday Schools began buying into 19th century scholars at seminaries and universities challenging the truth, history and moral teachings of the Bible well over 100 years before his grandparents who raised him became agnostics and Jim Wallis‘ grandparents were probably still Bible thumpers. And those academicians and theologians were pointing back to theories and challenges centuries before them cooked up by Germans.

4. You can give him credit for the rise of the Tea Party movement--but even most of that credit goes to Glenn Beck and the Libertarians who birthed it and are now struggling over who’s going to raise the mischievous active toddler. With the infusion of the youth of the Libertarian party, the average age of a Tea Party group (there is no actual political party) is dropping a bit. But it did have a lot of appeal for my generation. People raised during the 1950s have a clearer view (although part fairy tale in my opinion) of the 1950s and pre-Vietnam 60s than they do what they had for lunch yesterday. When they heard candidate Obama talk in 2008 about “fundamentally transforming society” or “transferring wealth,” they had enough time in retirement to reflect on just where the trillions on social engineering since LBJ’s War on Poverty went. Younger business people paid attention too, so that after July 2008 they virtually stopped investing and hiring for expansion. Would more never be enough? And it was a recession, those born in the 30s and 40s were retired, and had time to attend town halls, rallies, and participate in social media. The Tea Party is grass roots. It will evolve and become more main stream. But right now it’s the only American political movement with any blood, guts and brains.