By John Ransom
Saturday, November 05, 2011
Let’s just stick to skills. Let’s not talk about how bad his policies are.
Because I can’t think of a person who is less suited and less interested in being president of the United States than Barack Obama is.
I’m reminded of this as I see Europe drift from debt to crisis to dissolution.
“Events in Greece over the past 24 hours have underscored the importance of implementing the plan, fully and as quickly as possible,” said the US president according to Euronews.
I didn’t understand that there was a real plan for the Greek debt crisis. If there is one, certainly Obama has nothing to do with it.
People like to pretend at times that who our president is doesn’t matter. They say presidents get either too much blame or too much credit. Can’t say much about the credit part, but it’s not possible to blame Obama enough for the poor state of the United States and the lack of leadership and confidence the United States engenders around the world today.
In our economy, our relations with other powers, our reputation around the globe, we’ve become a laughingstock under Obama. “Hope and Change” has become a hackneyed punch line of lost chances, hopes destroyed and dreams knowingly betrayed by golf vacations.
Obama has offered us nothing but our blood, our toil, our tears and our sweat; and for what?
So public employees can continue to bust public budgets on Cadillac benefits that you and I can’t afford. All this while he pushes austerity down the throats of a sovereign Greece.
I’m tired of Obama’s “leading from behind.” That’s not leading, that’s pushing
Don’t think for one minute that Obama would accept for his union friends the type of cuts he says he favors for Greece.
We’ve gone from each according to his means to each according to his union. We’ve gone from a post-partisan, post-racial America, to all partisan, all the time.
The president of the United States once, not long ago, stood up to Communism when they tried to take over South Korea- in this, he was sustained by the whole world. Today we’re left with the president being lectured to by Chinese Communists regarding reckless spending; and after being lectured to by Chinese Communists, in return, all Obama can offer to Europe is lectures about their own profligate ways.
It’s inconceivable that a Reagan or a Kennedy would let things drift with a world in crisis. A Reagan or a Kennedy would have acted, if only in a moral sense. Both George Bushes had enough sense for that.
"I am confident that Europe has the capacity to meet this challenge. I know it isn't easy, but what is absolutely critical, and what the world looks for in moments such as this, is action," said Obama after a G20 meeting on Europe’s debt crisis, according to the Wall Street Journal.
But don’t look for action from Obama. If he could attack Greece with a covert drone missile strike, he’d probably do so in order to avoid having to exercise real leadership.
He’s been the "drone" president on fiscal issues here in the US too, having dinner with his family and getting a hair cut while his aides bickered about bailouts.
There was a day when the US could help exercise some leadership on the European stage. But if Obama’s interested in the European debt issue, then that’s news to me, German chancellor Angela Merkel, French president Sarkozy, members of the G20, fans of All My Children or anyone with electricity.
Obama has become the absentee landlord of the world, not presiding over the budget; abstaining from the debt ceiling; absent from Europe during the debt crisis; issuing a bull against a tsunami as enjoyed his own National Lampoon’s Brazilian Vacation.
If I were Greek, I’d be worried about the missile strike.
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