One wonders whether President Obama, for all the soaring rhetoric, grasps why certain nations really do hate us. Does he think a Grozny, Darfur, Rwanda, Serbia, or Tibet happen in reaction to US global sinful conduct? Does he appreciate why hot spots like Cyprus, Taiwan, or Georgia, do not boil over—or under what conditions they might? Does he really believe that in the pre-Bush era we all got long (cf. his al-Arabiya interview); then Bush’s strutting, unilateralism, and preemption, presto, caused anti-Americanism?
Take Iran. It wants to be the preeminent regional power in the Middle East, and win for the Persian Shiites the mantle of Islamic frontline leadership in the long war to destroy Israel. That requires oil revenue, sponsorship of terror, and nuclear weaponry.
Despite Bill Clinton’s past ramblings, it is not democratic; instead, prescreened, preapproved candidates are confirmed by plebiscites, and civil liberties are nonexistent as we know them. The history of Khomeinism is one of executing thousands of Shah-supporters, sending tens of thousands to their deaths in mass wave attacks in Iraq, and using surrogate Hezbollah and Shiite operatives to blow up Americans from Lebanon to Iraq. In other words, a democratic internationalist America stands in the way of their megalomaniac aspirations.
After the Carter humiliations, the Reagan disaster with Iran-Contra, the Clinton feeble attempts at appeasement, Americans gave up on the Khomeinists, and more or less hoped to distinguish the Iranian people from their theocracy, talk up democratic change, and contain the mullahs’ terrorist aspirations. We can do this adroitly or clumsily, but existential differences will remain nonetheless—until a change in ideology on their or our part. Either they reenter the family of nations, or we redefine the family of nations to include thugocracies.
And now? What is there to negotiate over? How soon they can have the bomb? Triangulation with them over Israel? Promises to quit sending shaped charges into Iraq to kill more Americans?
Why does Hugo Chavez hate us? Is it because Bush’s ‘dead or alive’ed him or ‘with us or against us”ed him? Hardly. Chavez wants to end democracy in Venezuela for good, turn it into a Cuba-like communist dictatorship, use his oil revenues to whip up liberationist, anti-Yanqui feelings throughout South America, and end up with himself as some sort of messianic caudillo of the entire socialist continent. Sound crazy?
No more crazy than the daily Chavez communiqués. Again, by good or bad diplomacy we can soothe or excite him–but otherwise his aims are antithetical to the notion of democratic, capitalist states, with close ties to the North American democracies.
We can ditto all this with North Korea, Cuba, Russia, Syria, etc. So far all the Obama apologies for the sins of his own country (note always before he came on the scene), the serial “Bush did it” invective, the promises of a brave new Obama transnational world, the evocation of his middle name, and non-traditional lineage, and shared demagoguery against “them” (Wall Street, the greedy, the unpatriotic who make over the mythical trip wire $250,000), have not, and will not, change much abroad. Has Cuba promised to release prisoners, or apologized for all those killed? Has Chavez vowed to restore constitutional governance and quit subversion of his neighbors?
Do you realize almost all of our major elected officials are all prescreened and preapproived. this is how the world works and has always worked. Bush’s administration knew this and they did what they thought was best being and aggressor and that is why anti-americanism has blown up over the past few years. We stopped listening and just kept talking and telling other countries what was going to happen. To sell and idea and make a friend you need to be the one listening and understanding your friends and enemies to get anything done. People need to stop taking right winged and left winged sides and call it how they see it. Dont bring names and other peoples beliefs into your ideas. Dont throw those meaningless words out there to justify your stance….make a real difference dont just comment on it.
Professor,
I’ll opt for choice (f): None of the above. Mr. Obama is a cynical manipulator of his party’s idealistic sentiments. He’s a narcissist who wishes only to maintain power for the gratification of his own ego. He has no grasp of policy other than what might keep him popular in the eyes of his adoring minions.
It CAN happen here.
But through us, four generations will remember.
It is purely messianic. When faced with real choices our Preident will be weak and indecisive. The carrion is already in the road and the circling birds are gathering.
There will be a feast and we are the meat.
The USA is so oppressive that Obama rises to become its president? Maybe he was installed by the powers that be. So Clinton becomes William Rogers and when the sown mines begin to explode, Obama will find his Kissinger.
I think that Obama working so hard to tell us all that we have done wrong, and not tell us what we need to do right in the future is a bad sign, that we no longer see in America what we need to fix our problems. He may stay in Iraq, and also want to fight in Afghanistan, which admittedly is something that is appropriate coming from America’s standpoint, but I wonder what this means for our country.
Obama wants to tell us that there are no problems that cannot be solved without the viewpoint of the world, but what we need to solve these problems is the viewpoint of America. That’s the problem I see with all this. What else can solve the problem except the view that America can understand its own society and so create a better world? If we cannnot understand our own society how will we understand anyone else’s?
Obama wants to tell everyone that they can never understand their own society unless someone comes from on high and tells them exactly what happened and how it should be handled.
Dr. Hanson,
I cannot agree with you more. I, too, am confused by Obama’s motives. But I have begun to think that putting a lot of effort into this question might be a waste of time.
Actions may speak louder than words yet, in politics, words are action, especially with this president.
Obama’s words to the world might be packaged for domestic political purposes. They might even be motivated by personal, messianic narcissism or cynical Democratic Party intrigue and savvy designed to dwarf his secretary of state. Perhaps he sincerely believes in conflict resolution and that we can talk a way out of international conflict through the UN. Maybe he honestly sees American power and influence as a blight on world history extending from its own oppressive history with minorities.
To discern the “correct” motive for Obama’s words doesn’t matter. This isn’t a criminal case. He already has the means with a Democratic congress and four years of opportunity to do almost anything he wants.
As far as motive goes, why not say “yes” to all of your questions? In the end it won’t matter. The result will be the same: a diminution of American prestige, influence and power that moves us closer to Obama’s collectivist world-view where fairness and equality thwart individual responsibility and liberty.
Obama is a post-modern rhetorician. His whole life is consumed by words. Words have never failed him as an academic or politician. He uses them cleverly while useful idiots fail to note the non sequiturs, straw men and double talk.
Perhaps we wonder about his motives because we know so little of what he really is and thinks from his thin resume’. All we have are his words.
That being the case, I think it would be wise of us to take him at his words even if it means believing the worst.
He may be a sheep in wolves’ clothing but a sheep all the same. If he appears to be weak, then he is weak as far as our enemies–and the rest of the world–see him and they will act accordingly.
Wishful thinking otherwise or divining his true motives will not change this. He is being sized up by the world and, as you say, the result will be soon.
His grade school paper (briefly mentioned during the Democrat primaries) suggested he wanted to be President to make everybody happy. He is from a (multiply) broken home (as am I), and I think it wise to infer that his psyche is heavily invested in the adulation.
Now… it is also possible that he is “crazy like a fox”, and is lulling the international “community” (of thugs) to believe that he is an empty suit.
It is also possible that he really is just an empty suit.
How to tell the difference? Events, dear boy, events.
The Emperor has no clothes. The blind will never see but our enemies and friends will soon figure it out, if they haven’t already.
(e) Does Obama see the U.S. as a uniquely oppressive society,and hence have empathy for a Castro or Chavez, at least more than he does for Americans of the sort who go to tea parties and listen to Fox News?
Yes.
The Iranian leadership says it wants to destroy Israel with an atomic bomb. Americans on the Left won’t believe Iran wants to destroy Israel with an atomic bomb. The kind of proof the Left demands can only come after the fact. Then it will be too late.
The President doesn’t really care about the rest of the world. He mostly hopes to change things here. Level income. Sustain scapegoats. Give free money to whoever he wants.
Think of the Henry Fords, Walt Disneys, Ray Krocs, Bill Gates, Sam Waltons. They showed how great Americans can be in transforming vision into reality, giving huge employment, and making tons of money for themselves.
Will the President tax, regulate and bureaucratize in a way that may hinder that kind of accomplishment? It looks that way to me.
I don’t think we’re necessarily smarter than people in other nations. We’ve just had an opportunity that most never had. Others have been hindered by disadvantaged birth or planned, controlled, and regulated economic systems.
Some here have also suffered from disadvantaged birth. But I think the President aims to hinder us all equally.
“Does he think a Grozny, Darfur, Rwanda, Serbia, or Tibet happen in reaction to US global sinful conduct?”
Barack Obama, in his heart of hearts, does indeed believe that the United States is somehow responsible for all of the troubles of the world. This is a committed man of the non-violent radical left. Obama does not share Bill Ayers’ violent inclinations. Nonetheless, he has an intense subconscious anger towards so-called white oppressors of dark skinned people. Nobody spends twenty years attending a church lead by someone like Rev. Jeremiah Wright unless they have issues with white individuals. Never forget that Obama freely and maliciously employs the race card. His whole professional life revolves around taking advantage of guilt-tripped whites.
I am more and more convinced that Obama simply doesn’t know what he is doing. He is acting out the “Sorry the US did it” routine because its the only one he knows how to act out. But I do think he is intelligent and as an american abroad I hope he will quickly grow into his pants and learn to put on a more US-Presidential mask before too much damage is done.
Wow. I feel like I’m talking to myself. Just like Peter O’Toole in “The Ruling Class”. Thanks VDH. I’m still here.
“Does he appreciate why hot spots like Cyprus, Taiwan, or Georgia, do not boil over—or under what conditions they might? Does he really believe that in the pre-Bush era we all got long (cf. his al-Arabiya interview); then Bush’s strutting, unilateralism, and preemption, presto, caused anti-Americanism?
One wonders. foreign powers can smell weakness, but is it possible Obama retreats to the magical child-holy-peacemaker only because he got so much mileage from it with the women vote last year? Does he do it now for easy convenience, hoping to lay the golden egg, but lays one goose egg after another in rogue states around the globe?
Of what mind is he when he does this for states that did not elect him?
I go with your point (e): If the mothers milk is Wright, Ayers, and Khalidi, etc, then he still believes Cuba, Chavez’ Venezuela, North Korea, Iran, even “Palestine” (Khalidi’s input), oh, Turkey, Sudan, and so on are “farther along” than we are, based on the re-routed fiction of reverse pragmatism: these States must be right, so the ideology must also be right as well.
And yes, of course they all lack the soul searching, confessional culture of complaint that we do.
And apparently there is no good lesson of America’s legacy that Obama can’t patronize one minute, and then trash the next.
All of which sends a message that Obama is of conflicted priorities, does not know what the situation requires, and that he can be gamed to his (own) disadvantage, just the way Axelrod and Emmanuel did of the electorate. that’s a perilous premise.
the Progress of the world, according to liberal, and libertarian values, still rests with whether or not U.S. has bad (weak), or good (strong) leadership. And Obama has been brainwashed with anti-american dogma, into thinking that progress comes from somewhere, anywhere else.
Another rousing piece, Mr. Hanson.
It got me to thinking: as gestures go, saying to America’s global detractors, “I’m the new Big Man on Campus. The old one didn’t do it your way. I will,” is the sort of shallow one-ups-manship that grade-schoolers learn to employ while playing “King of the Mountain” at recess on the jungle-gym.
And, un-employ it…
Most of us outgrow the tactic’s use because the tic suffers from two general flaws. First, the habit only garners two things and both are negative. These are, one, short-lived, saccharin applause from the “old guy’s” (ie. republican America’s) political detractors like CNN, Soros, and Gerhard Schroeder, and two, the purely delusional (and usually self-serving) notion that keen historic opponents of the USA will respond to such florid gestures by offering concrete, bank-able concessions.
The second flaw is, pretenses of empathy become exactly that, pretenses. Jacques Chirac once famously said, “We are all Americans, now.” But, no one working sincerely to depose Milosevic, or to enforce UN Security Council resolutions in Iraq (both of which were bipartisan, American priorities) can say with a straight face that Chirac ever meant it. In effect, Obama’s “Empathy Tours” seem designed to impress over and over that it is we Americans that are all Cubans, Zimbabweans, or Hezbollah now. This risks ringing equally hollow.
Which brings me to my worry: Obama may think he’s offering a meaty stew of “understanding” when he serves his apologias, but if, after the din of his acolytes’ reflexive applause recedes, and yet, months later, America’s global competitors for energy, Han Jin container space, and global investment-capital offer no new concessions in return, then all Obama will be left with is the dangerous part: petty, self-serving delusion.
Self-delusion in a powerful megalomaniacal personality is dangerous mix. There is no way that can this can end well.
I’ll also opt for “None of the Above”.
I think liberals as a group believe that countries can be treated like individuals. Use honey, not vinegar, take ‘em aside for a nice private chat, share some heart-to-heart personal face time, smile and say you understand, and they’ll warm up to you and be your BFF. But I don’t think it works like that. International relations is a bit like Junior High School. Everybody’s got a clique, everybody who can get away with it is a bully and the rest are victims, and everyone is always on a stage playing to an audience. Image matters more than anything, and you can’t let yourself be viewed as weak or a sucker, or you’re dead meat. So I think, as usual, the liberals are starting from a false premise and extrapolating their paradigm into the real world where it makes absolutely no sense at all.
(And they use a similarly flawed inductive reasoning process with economics, too, where they can do really BIG damage.)
VDH:
Unfortunately, not being vetted by the MSM leaves us guessing as to Obama’s true motivation. I’d lean towards (a) at this point. Blaming America for all the world’s problems is, ironically, an American-centric view of history (Perhaps this is why the French leader is the first to object to Obama’s proclamations). Most of the world buys onto this meme, believing in it or at least using it for their own purposes. On the world stage he’s preaching to the choir. So what does Obama get from this tact?
First, note that Obama is not blaming America per se, he’s blaming Conservative America. His America bashing foreign forays, complete with kowtowing and jive-talk to America’s adversaries, target the same audience denounced by his Administration in that DHS report. He’s intentionally provoking a backlash from conservative — and some mainstream — Americans. All that unity talk during the campaign was a feint designed to soften up the public for this nonsensical onslaught on conservative beliefs still held by a majority of Americans. His actions are too in-your-face to be happenstance or coincidence. He believes there are two Americas, and the conservative half needs needs to join their “racist” ancestors in history’s dustbin. When the inevitable backlash from the Right comes, it will be used to fully marginalize this group indefinitely. In short, Obama is asking AMERICA to decide: Are you with him or against him. There is no middle ground anymore.
Addendum to the above:
Typical Alinsky-ite approach: Define the opposition in your terms, marginalize it and destroy it. Subtlety and nuance not required. Obama must be hoping our adversaries around the world will see fit to wait this domestic battle out and see if he manages to completely neuter America.
All the America-bashing, coming from an American president is confounding enough, but then I recently read that Obama is now credited even with inspiring the remaining members of the Grateful Dead to reunite and go on tour. That’s going too far!!!
But seriously, this “Too often, America has…” rhetoric is incredibly foolish, dangerous, naive, and all the other things I expected from Carter #2 – how sad to be proved so correct regarding a matter on which I’d really rather have been totally wrong.
Having read his books, all of his policy positions, watched him give numerous speeches and in numerous debates, I have formed an opinion of the impetus behind Barack Obama.
He believes four things at his core:
1. He sees himself much more as a multicultural citizen of the world than a citizen of the United States.
2. He believes we live in a post-historic time; that the old lessons of strength and weakness do not apply and in this world, his charismatic pre-emptive diplomacy can work.
3. We can live in a post-economic world; government can run the economy if only the rapacious capitalists are brought to heel.
4. America and America’s aggression is responsible for many of the ills in the world.
The answer then, to solving much of what is wrong in the world, is to weaken the U.S.
1. To bring others to the liberating, enlightened paradigm of multicultural world citizenship, he must constantly invoke moral equivalence between the U.S. and every other country. E.g. his statement that he believes in Amerian Exceptionalism just as Brits believe in British Exceptionalism, etc.
2. The reason diplomacy has failed in the past is because we have lived in the world of power politics and because aggressive actors will not allow diplomatic efforts to flourish. He sees America as the most aggressive actor, so the solution is to take a more conciliatory posture and weaken America so it has not the means to act internationall aggressive. E.g. cut military spending and borrow from everyone to make the U.S. dependent on the rest of the world, hence, again limit the U.S.’s ability to act aggressively.
3. Just look at the “stimulus”, the budget, and just about every one of his economic policies. They are designed to bring business to heel and put government in charge.
4. If America is responsible for much of what is wrong with the world, then the U.S. must be subjected to supranational governance and must be economically and militarily weakened. E.g. Deference to the U.N. and the “International Community” and prostrating the U.S. in the European and Latin American trips.
Of course, that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong.
What a paradox? (or irony, I don’t know which), that president Obama opens the table by ceding the moral high ground to the worst [rogue actors] the world at large has to offer.
And the rogue states get to walk way from the table, ceding nothing, and taking with them a big fat blank cheque for next time.
The recurring leitmotif is that Obama has this mein kampf with American Exceptionalism. (and we all know all about why: Alinsky, Ayers, Davis, Emil Jones, Khalidi, Nitty, Stroger, Wright)
What’s ironic is that the left gets pretty snippy with its inexhaustible, never ending renewable supply of righteous indignation, never ceding the moral high ground resources of any thing “social justice”.
(I thought the civil rights canard would have been pretty well exhausted by now, silly me.)
What bothers me is that in this theraputic culture the president is given this handicap, and played to it lest his self esteem fall into jeopardy.
And explains the source of their panic and feeble response to tea party assemblies.
cfbleachers pointed out, (at Works and Days: The Postnational, postmodern, post-everything Presidential Trip comment #27) that democrat stool stands on 2 pillars, Viet Nam, and civil rights
Reality is calling the civil rights bluff and it [as used for everything now: Same-sex marriage, Global warming punishments, hostile takeovers of industry by big bummit, fearness doctrine(s), profligate spending, you name it, etc] it will soon collapse, leaving Obama with one shaky pillar to stand on: foreign Policy.
Olympic gymnast Keri Strug sprained her ankle, and then ran down the ramp and nailed another leap across that most brutal of Olympic gymnastics trials, the pommel horse, and had to land on one leg and won it for the team.
Can President Obama do the same and bring World-Wide Peace in Our Time? Not this way. History says otherwise.
Yes, #1 Mike (above), we’ll sit down and listen to Putin, Ahmadinijad, Chavez, et. al. and find out what’s really disturbing them. What they really want. What we’ve done in so many callous ways to wrong them so.
Then, of course, they will in turn listen to us…our aspirations, needs, and goals.
And finally, together, we’ll all compromise and honor the other by working out a plan that will make us all harmoniously happy. And the rest of the world will look on approvingly now that all us former bad-boys have found brotherhood.
No one will resent us, we’ll be just-one-of the-boys with everyone, including those boys listed above. To overcome any (very understandable) suspicion from Others, given our past misconduct, we’ll grease things along by sharing our wealth, technology, and our hugs and admiration for, well, for everything equally because it’s, like, all good. If need be, perhaps a bit of groveling on our part of really needed.
Yep, Mike, sounds like a plan to me. Apparently, to Barack, too.
“My only confusion is over motive. Does Obama do this for…”
I pick none of the listed choices. I believe Obama hates America and is doing everything possible at home and abroad to destroy it. Obama did more damage to US foreign policy in ten days than the USSR’s KGB masterminds did in ten years of Cold War maneuvering. Couple that with all the economic damage he did in the first ten weeks of his presidency and you can see how effective he has been. An objective Congress would be impeaching him.
If the Governor of Texas is able to get the state of Texas secede, I’m moving there before the ink is dry on the document…
Essential vdh
It seems that it should be becoming clear based on the comments that BHO is the high water mark of the Anti American seeds that were planted in the useful American idiots.
The beginning was in the 1940′s and even before by the communists when the communist party thought that bloody revolutions were the answer accept when they were not–as in the USA.
The USA was to advanced and successful and direct proof the Communist Socialist Ideology ” was not the answer to human progress.
The immigrants of the world were trying to get into America. They still are but now for the wrong reasons. Until we run dry.
Now we have come full circle and the outcome for the Republic of America will be determined by just how long BHO and his left wing anti American functionaries are left in office.
BHO and his functionaries will “solve” the immigration problem eventually. As all socialist countries have.
Eventually America will be putting “fences” up to keep people and businesses in.
The question that needs to be asked is how badly the Republic of America has been seeded with the Socialist “Victim” class that is now victimizing Americans.
Well over 60 years and the “crop” is now beginning to bear “fruit”. BHO is an example of the fruit.
America is paying the price for letting indoctrination and to little and inadequate education.
This along with the destruction of the family by dependency is destroying American truths and values. Western Values founded on Christian principles.
Simply by Using the ignorant confusion due to the lack of proper education about a Democracy versus a Republic, to destroy and to steal America without a fight.
Added and abetted by the demonstrable fools in the MSM.
It would not seem a stretch when listening to some of BHO’s functionaries call the Tea Parties “Unhealthy”. That more will follow.
What will come next after “unhealthy” Illegal? Then being Jailed as in the USSR or Venezuela or Cuba.
Think about it America. Quit looking at individual trees and commenting. Look at the Forest and what it is telling you.
Chamberlain defined appeasement in clear terms:
“We should seek by all means in our power to avoid war, by analyzing possible causes, by trying to remove them, by discussion in a spirit of collaboration and good will. I cannot believe that such a program would be rejected by the people of this country, even if it does mean the establishment of personal contact with dictators, and of talks man to man on the basis that each, while maintaining his own ideas of the internal government of his country, is willing to allow that other systems may suit better other peoples.”
The Obama Doctrine, top to bottom. The one stated purpose is “to avoid war,” not to protect the nation, and certainly not to defend democratic allies from aggression. The spirit of collaboration and good will is to be offered to and expected from aggressive dictators. There is the humble (and very modern) acknowledgement that democracy and freedom are not to be regarded as somehow better than dictatorship, along with the assumption that dictators will return our humility with a similar attitude toward their own Reichs.
President Obama’s recent forays into the wider world have been positively Chamberlainesque (although there is no evidence that Chamberlain ever actually bowed to Hitler.) His humble apologies for our sins, his delicate refusal to criticize Iran’s warmongering or Saudi Arabia’s persecution of women or China’s dictatorship, his pious moral equivalence of Israel and Iran/Hamas/Hezbollah.
Still, maybe this time appeasement will work. You never know.
[Flashback: Bullwinkle: “Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!” Rocky: “That trick never works.” Bullwinkle: “This time for sure.” Bullwinkle (after pulling out a lion): “I gotta get a new hat.”]
We need a new hat.
Ha. Funny that you should write this, and interesting as usual.
I wrote this article “Post_Obama-pocalypse” about a month ago now.
http://encyc.org/wiki/Post_Obama-pocalypse
Of course, everyone can edit it.
“And the result will be soon, as Sarkozy presciently saw, a general sizing up of the Obama two-step. They will either believe that we are weak, and cannot stand in the way of their illiberal agendas, or believe that Obama is somewhat sympathetic to their anti-capitalist, anti-democratic scenarios, or believe that he is a true multiculturalist who believes in the “Post-American world”.”
Could there be a third alternative? What if instead of “post-American” world, what if it is “transformed world”? Uh, oh. I may have drunk the kool-aid. =d ack!
Dear Dr. Hanson:
Regarding your conjecture about why Obama behaves so oddly:
(1) He is indeed messianic and clinically, dangerously narcissistic. He had consumed the Kool Aid, bought his own PR, and believes that he is a transcendent figure, not only in American history, but in the scope of human history. One need not read much of his rhetoric to see this
(A) Every day, there is more and more evidence that Obama feels it’s all about him. Thus does he allow murderous
despots to denigrate America to his face. Thus does he speak of mutual respect with regimes whose extended
hands are dripping with the blood of innocents, sub-human beasts who not only deserve no respect, but who
deserve only death.
(2) Certainly there is much raw political calculation in what he does, but that is secondary to his unwavering self-regard, and likely orchestrated by his political operatives. And as a true believer, the ends absolutely justify the means. Thus do we see incredibly bold-faced lies on virtually a daily basis. Can any sentient being believe he had no idea of the Tea Parties?
(3) He certainly believes the standard liberal/socialist theory of international relations and conflict resolution, combined with the dangerous fiction that merely talking with one’s adversary is an enormous accomplishment in and of itself. Signing a piece of paper is historic and prima facie evidence of incredible personal power and acumen, regardless of whether one’s enemy is cheating on the treaty before the ink dries, ala North Korea.
(4) Obama clearly sees the United States as terribly flawed (he says so every chance he gets), and his entire life has been spent at the feet of socialist/Marxist theorists and terrorists, so it’s hardly surprising that he would embrace such sociopathic scum.
All of this is manifested in Obama’s submission to the Saudi King and the clumsy lies the White House spewed about his bowing. We see it in his constant denigration of America, and his moral preening. His insults, calculated and merely oafish, of our closest allies. His release of secrets of the kind Americans have given their lives to protect, his smiling and handshaking of murderous dictators and his constant denigration of President Bush combined with his juvenile posturing clearly indicate that he thinks everything is about him. And if it was only Barack Obama, Acorn activist, socialist, community organizer, race hustler, Chicago machine politician, who was doing those things, who would care? But the President of the United States cannot engage in such behavior because each and every slight, each misstep, each instance of perceived weakness, each slip in protocol, each slap in the face of our intelligence and military professionals has consequences, consequences that will surely prove to be deadly for a great many Americans, and sooner, not later. It will indeed end badly, for us and for the world.
The comments have been stuck at #18 for a couple of days now.
Strange.
Obama is, more than anything else, a symbol of what the democratic left and the MSM think is a marketing tool for their version of utopia. He has no core values or independent ideas about the world because the sum of his experience is zero.
The popular myth is Obama is a post-generational leader who is wiser and better equipped to lead us out of the wilderness. In fact, he’s nothing but a primped show-pony on a leash dragged around by the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to advance the Democratic Party brand.
His White House staff is Carter-like in its immatureness. His spokesperson Gibbs is a buffoon and the rest aren’t much better. The democratic brand has suffered owing to an apparent inability to figure out Turbo Tax or pay the illegal aliens they employ as nanny’s and groundskeepers.
Obama has made as ass out of himself on the world stage – in less than 100 days he’s managed to embarrass all of us with his kindergarten level attempts to sit at the grown-ups table. He and the MSM assumed certain people hated us because of George Bush and his policies. In fact, they hate us because of our freedoms and economic success. Hugo Chavez doesn’t care who the President of the United States is so long as he can use that person to further his agenda in Venezuela.
Naiveté is expected in children and the simple minded, yet it is a serious handicap in the leader of the free world. Obama and his minions haven’t the maturity or experience to run the night shift at my local McDonalds.
#28 Hans:
We’re also gonna need a bigger boat.
It all sounds like TREASON to me!