Curmudgeon's Corner

They Still Don't Get It...

Posted by Al Campbell on Jan. 29, 2010

Economy, Healthcare, Political, Quality of Life, Taxes, U.S.

They still don’t get it, do they?

In the aftermath of our President’s first State of the Union speech, and the fall-out from the press and the talking heads, even those who have been VERY favorably disposed toward the “Chosen One”, they just don’t get it.

The “they” to whom I refer are those in the White House and many of those in both the House and the Senate.

Our President, Barack Obama, did nothing to indicate that he really caught the drift from the Massachusetts election of barely a week ago.  If he caught the drift, then he has already made up his mind to ignore that huge writing on a solid Democrat wall.

He told a mistruth about the Supreme Court’s recent decision on free speech, and he is an attorney and a law lecturer.  He could’ve and should’ve (and probably had) researched that issue and that decision before chastising the Supreme Court Justices in attendance, in attendance as a courtesy to him by the way.  He had to have known that he was spewing an untruth but he just couldn’t help himself.  It was politics as usual, so far as the past year’s politics anyway.

He has spent whatever goodwill he had accumulated; beyond “spent”, he has squandered that goodwill.  It will not come back to him; it never has when other presidents have done that same thing, and it won’t for President Obama.

He has persisted in giving away as much as possible as quickly as possible to those whom he owes for his victory.  He has done so without regard to what each such “gift” means to the country.  What has the “gift” of a terrorist trial in New York City cost the rest of us?  What will abolishing “don’t ask; don’t tell” do to our military and our country?  What will the special deals for labor unions do to the country’s long-term economy?  The “gift” of Chrysler to the United Autoworkers for example?  He continues to beat the drum about health care reform while the great majority of people in our country have come to understand this is foolish in its current iteration.

Maybe it is the result of a neophyte being given so much adulation so quickly and at such a young and inexperienced age.  Maybe it is that he has led a golden life courtesy of this country, and he simply thinks this is his due.  Maybe it is that he believed his own publicity too deeply.  Maybe it is that the Republicans really needed to have their lunch handed to them by this President so that they would finally come to their collective senses.

I don’t know all the reasons for his party’s mishandling, and his personal mishandling, of their newfound power, but they have really mishandled that to the point of having squandered their power.  The people have come to their senses. 

By all accounts, if Obama and the Democrats would’ve come before the American people with some contriteness this past Wednesday evening, the American people would’ve likely given them a break to one degree or another.  But President Obama was not “presidential”; his remarks were those of the Chicago political machine; his rebukes of the Supreme Court were way out-of-line.  His promises rang hollow because he has yet to really deliver on the other promises he has presented to us.

He seems to have taken “hope and change” to “hope for change”, and he has done so in remarkably short order.

I will be surprised if the fall elections do not reflect how badly his image, and that of this Congress, has been tarnished.