The Clown-In-Chief

Who would have thought that the presidency of the United States could have been degraded any more than it had been in the Clinton years? Oh but it has. In the short span of two years, President Obama has managed to sully the office every bit as much as President Clinton did in eight years. Maybe it’s not so surprising. He is after all an overachiever.  This law professor, who we found out after the election wasn’t … this senator, with the thinnest of resumes … this radical leftist that sought, in his own words, to “fundamentally change America” and “cause energy rates to necessarily skyrocket,” and encouraged Hispanics to target his “enemies” has done more damage to our nation than any other president in our history.  I’m including Carter here.  So why am I surprised to see the so-called leader of the free world hitting the comedy shows before an election that is expected to wipe out Democrat majorities in Congress?

With six days remaining before the election President Obama hit The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Let me say for the record that The Daily Show is one of the most entertaining shows on TV. Is it a forum where serious people go to talk about serious issues? No. That fact was on display during this “interview” with President Obama. Stewart, with plenty of goading from the left-wing audience, proceeded to tease Mr. Obama about the perception that he hasn’t been liberal enough as president. Stewart reminded the commander in chief of all the sycophants that cheered when Obama made statements like, “We can’t expect different results with the same people.” Stewart went on to reflect the progressives’ collective frustration when the president hired a Clinton retread, Larry Summers, as director of the White House National Economic Council. Stewart lamented, “That seems like the exact same person.” Obama retorted, “In fairness, Larry Summers did a heck of a job trying to figure out how to …”

“You don’t want to use that phrase, dude,” Stewart cautioned.  DUDE!? … DUDE!!??  Now who could have seen that coming?  Why would anyone expect to have a comedian refer to the leader of our nation as “dude”? I don’t blame Stewart really. I have little respect for Mr. Obama’s ideology and worldview. But the office he holds requires the utmost respect from any citizen regardless of party or ideology. I doubt the president would have been called “dude” on a hard-hitting news program that addressed other concerns that 80% percent of the country who don’t identify themselves as liberal might have wanted addressed. But that was the point, wasn’t it? Mr. Obama will appear on a show where he won’t get challenged and where everyone expects to laugh. And the nation stared in amazement as Mr. Obama was the biggest joke of the night.

And how much intellectual honesty can we expect from the extreme left wing in this country?  When President Bush, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, said, “Heck of a job, Brownie” to Michael D. Brown, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the left went crazy. It was confirmation for the progressives that Republicans were cold-hearted people who wanted minorities and poor people to just up and die. It was a rallying cry for liberals. It was a clear illustration, in their minds, that Bush was out of touch. It was proof that he cared nothing about people in despair. Who can forget Kanye West saying Bush didn’t care about black people?

Now here’s President Obama saying, “In fairness, Larry Summers did a heck of a job… .” Using the left’s rationale, the majority of the country can now conclude that Mr. Obama is indeed out of touch. Our unemployment rate hovers near 10%. We’ve wasted trillions of dollars in useless payoffs to Mr. Obama’s union buddies and other special interests. And we have little to show for it.  Our children are born over $42,000 in debt. Using the left’s rubric, we can conclude that the president hates successful people.  He believes that government has a right to take money earned through honest effort and hard work and redistribute it to gain political advantage. And with the utterance of those words, we can now confirm that Obama’s mission, in the most devious traditions of Cloward and Piven, is to destroy our capitalist system and replace it with a European style nanny-state model.

Unnoticed in the first 24 hours after The Daily Show appearance was the president’s expressed desire to change the checks and balances system in our government. He told Stewart that he wants to do away with the filibuster, a mechanism designed to keep the majority from running roughshod over the minority. Those Democrats who are left after the midterms may want to appeal to the president to drop his new campaign to rule unchallenged. Two more years of liberal policies may make that filibuster handy on the Democrat side of the ledger after 2012’s elections. But the president’s whining and stomping of feet in protestation that his policies are being resisted by the country en masse confirm many things for me. Primarily, we are being ruled by children on Capitol Hill. They are thin-skinned. They are ill-equipped. And they have a plan for the nation that is contrary to our founding principles.  President Obama has never gotten out of the 2008 campaign mode. He has attempted to rule the nation in the same manner he treated Hillary Clinton in the Democrat primary. It’s a cut-throat, calculated political strategy designed to get every vote at any cost. In the primary the cost was a former president’s legacy in the African American community and a New York senator’s self-respect. The cost now is the very prosperity that was to go to generations of Americans yet unborn.  So for at least two more years Mr. Obama will go on campaigning.  And when the heat gets turned up by a nation that craves a real leader, he’ll flash that smile, go on more vacations or head to a talk show or two.  And as he does so, Americans will look at his re-election bid and let out a collective laugh.  What else are they expected to do when they watch the antics of a clown?