Kevin McCullough
Sunday, January 31, 2010
The incoherent State of the Union address this week only reinforced what is becoming painfully obvious to any observer--President Obama's proposals are more confusing than clarifying, they pretend to do something big but don't achieve it, and they seem desperately out of touch with the average American.
How else can one explain that following his involvement in the campaign, he helped lose a Senate seat in Massachusetts that had belonged to his party since before his own birth?
"But," you may argue, "the State of the Union was last week, what about his accomplishment since?"
Ok. I'll take the bait. Let's just deal with the past 24 hours. On the road in Florida, and in conference with Republican congressional representatives, the President still could not come up with coherent, sound ideas for resolving unemployment, or re-reforming a health care proposal that few in the nation like--on the left or right. In the conference with House Republicans he even went so far as to reassert his oft repeated lie that the GOP had not put forward any ideas in the Health Care debate. Understandably Mike Pence, Dr. Tom Price, and Paul Ryan all seemed to strenuously object and attempted to hold Obama's feet to the fire. Obama literally bristled on camera while being held to such open accountability before the watching television eye.
But friend, if you thought that all this staging and deliberation was a waste of time, how does one even come close to justifying the Obama administration's new commitment to "look into" (read that "meddle with") college football. (Shame on Republican Senator Orrin Hatch for asking him to by the way.)
Sports Illustrated revealed the effort on Saturday morning. Last night, my national radio audience had a very tough time getting their head around how or why--at this point in time--it makes any sense for the White House to be spending one second of their time and energy on the matter. College football grouched and moaned before it had the BCS, it grouched and moaned before it had the national coaches poll, it has grouched and moaned for years, and the idea of Obama looking into it is a drastic overreach into an area that does not effect the welfare of the average American.
Then there's the proposed "freeze on spending" that the White House revealed more details concerning. Twenty billion is all they plan to address. Twenty billion? Twenty billion?
Tarp was $350 billion x 2. Stimulus was $800 billion on paper. And the proposed budget Obama asked for topped out at $3 trillion. Don't get me wrong--I'd be thankful for a liberal to ever admit they will curb any amount of spending, but Obama's macho bravado on being fiscally sound doesn't resonate with his policies.
Thus is the state of things with Barack Obama. 400 speeches didn't "explain health care enough" to the American people, and spending freezes that begin in 2011 and consist of roughly 00.58% are supposed to be like a wave of the magic wand and cause people to fall back into their wonder-lust with the man who speaks hope and change.
But wasn't that kind of indicative of what we ended up getting all of Obama's first year?
He was willing to ignore the increasing unemployment while the rates ballooned to over double what they were on average under Bush, but moved heaven and earth to get the himself overseas to campaign for the city of Chicago to score the Olympics.
He knew that 1 in 10 Americans are without jobs, and 1 in 5 families don't make enough to pay their bills with the work they have, but played more rounds of golf in his first year than Bush did in all eight.
He pushed the domestic "criminal" trials of hardened terrorist animals upon the city that suffered the most on 9/11, but held 9 cabinet level meetings to decide to follow through on his own plans to try to win in Afghanistan.
He accepted the Nobel prize for peace... for doing nothing... and then sent 30,000 troops to attempt a strategy that military leaders said would work best with 80,000.
And best of all at the State of the Union, he claimed that the science is settled on "climate change" when the world had seen its fraud exposed, and even this weekend has had more evidence of the manipulation of that fraud come to light, but he pushed for the job killing, tax implementing cap and trade bill anyway.
From purely a strategic perspective, Obama has failed even himself. There is nothing for him to fall back on. It's all on his shoulders. His lies, as reported by... CNN. His plans, as he states them for himself. His terms, because he refuses to offer the other side a place at the table to discuss.
President Obama is utterly out of touch with real people.
And his worthless policy priorities demonstrate that better than any opposing strategist could ever devise.
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