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Is Obama lazy? (Updated)
American Thinker ^ | March 7, 2009 | Rick Moran

Posted on 03/07/2009 8:52:01 PM PST by Kaslin

All we're getting is whispers from the press, of course, A raised eyebrow here, a sad shake of the head there. But the picture that is emerging of Barack Obama, the executive, is not very flattering if you look between the lines.

Jennifer Rubin:

Well, it's becoming obvious he's not really much of a manager, decider, legislation-craftsman, or supervisor. His vetting process is in shambles and key Treasury slots are still vacant. His Treasury Secretary is a classic under-performer and Obama encourages that tendency by talking about everything other than our immediate recovery needs. He lets Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid do the legislating - and they've come up with an embarrassing stimulus and an omnibus spending-bill even Democrats aren't swallowing.

What does he like to do? Summits. These are in essence campaign events - faux town-halls where nary a discouraging word is heard and no real work is done. And he loves those campaign rallies around the country.

So if the report is accurate that others are crafting his political strategy (just like the Pelosi-Reid machine is drafting his legislation), it should should come as no surprise. George W. Bush was lambasted for poor management skills and excessive delegation. But that was nothing - Obama has delegated the entire task of governing. He will keep the campaigning for himself.

Ed Lasky:

Failure as a community organizer (at least he admits that, to some extent) :

Lazy as an attorney-dedicated to promoting himself:

Miner's firm specialized in civil rights litigation and in representing not-for-profits. "The 'game of law' irritated [Obama] more than fascinated him," Miner says. "There are people who just like the game. Barack didn't like the game."

Allison Davis, a former partner in Miner's firm (and the son of a prominent U. of C. professor), occupied an office next to Obama's at 14 West Erie Street. "He spent a lot of time working on his book [Dreams from My Father]," Davis recalls. "Some of my partners weren't happy with that, Barack sitting there with his keyboard on his lap and his feet up on the desk writing the book."

I am sure his colleagues, other lawyers, who actually had to work killer hours to pay his salaries, appreciated his work ethic.

(BTW, he kept getting extensions on the deadline to submit a manuscript, then he flew off to the South Pacific to "work on it")

Failure as a Senator: A habit of claiming credit for work he did  not do  :

After weeks of arduous negotiations, on April 6, 2006, a bipartisan group of senators burst out of the "President's Room," just off the Senate chamber, with a deal on new immigration policy.

As the half-dozen senators -- including John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Edward M. KennedySen.. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who made a request common when Capitol Hill news conferences are in the offing: "Hey, guys, can I come along?" And when Obama went before the microphones, he was generous with his list of senators to congratulate -- a list that included himself.

"I want to cite Lindsey Graham, Sam Brownback, Mel Martinez, Ken Salazar, myself, Dick Durbin, Joe Lieberman . . . who've actually had to wake up early to try to hammer this stuff out," he said.

To Senate staff members, who had been arriving for 7 a.m. negotiating sessions for weeks, it was a galling moment. Those morning sessions had attracted just three to four senators a side, Sen.. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) recalled, each deeply involved in the issue. Obama was not one of them. But in a presidential contest involving three sitting senators, embellishment of legislative records may be an inevitability, Specter said with a shrug.

Unlike governors, business leaders or vice presidents, senators -- the last to win the presidency was John F. Kennedy in 1960 -- are not executives. They cannot be held to account for the state of their states, their companies or their administrations. What they do have is the mark they leave on the nation's laws -- and in Obama's brief three-year tenure, as well as Sen.. Hillary Rodham Clinton's seven-year hitch, those marks are far from indelible.
(D-Mass.) -- headed to announce their plan, they met

And for being on  a Committee he was not on and doing work he did not do (again):

Barack Obama today boasted about a bill in "my committee,'' a committee on which he has no seat.

While speaking to the press in the Israeli town of Sderot, Obama mistakenly put the U.S. Senate banking committee on his resume, although the Illinois senator does not serve on the committee and Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) is the chairman.

The Republican National Committee distributed an e-mail pointing out Obama's mistake with a subject line of "Obama's Gaffe Machine Rolls Into Israel."

During the press conference, Obama said, "Just this past -- this past week, we passed out of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, which is my committee, a bill to call for divestment from Iran as a way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don't obtain a nuclear weapon."

Anyone see a pattern here? People overestimated him and he woefully undelivers-time and time again. No wonder he picked Geithner.

Moran's take:

Ed's evidence is compelling. I would add that during the early stages of the campaign, his "keepers of the body" - probably Axelrod at that point - overextended the candidate. His gaffes about 10,000 dead in a Kansas tornado came at the end of a long day of campaigning. They never made the same mistake again and limited his access to the press and reduced the number of events per day. This would seem to indicate the president doesn't have much stamina.

But he will continue to get a pass on this from the press unless the economy goes into free fall and still nothing much has been done.


UPDATE

Ed Lasky adds:

One more aspect of his lax work ethic is that he did not accomplish much as a State Senator (not just his habit of voting present) but also the fact that his so-called accomplishments as a state senator were fictitious .  Illinois Senate State President Emil Jones tacked his name onto bills that other people did the lifting on so that Jones, in Obama's own words, could make Obama a  U.S. Senator. 

In the State Senate, Jones did something even more important for Obama. He pushed him forward as the key sponsor of some of the Party's most important legislation, even though the move did not sit well with some colleagues who had plugged away in the minority on bills that Obama now championed as part of the majority. "Because he had been in the minority, Barack didn't have a legislative record to run on, and there was a buildup of all these great ideas that the Republicans kept in the rules committee when they were in the majority," Burns said. "Jones basically gave Obama the space to do what Obama wanted to do. Emil made it clear to people that it would be good for them."

"You have the power to make a United States senator," he told Emil Jones in 2003.


TOPICS: Editorial
KEYWORDS: bho2009; bho44; cantvotepresent; clueless; communistbastard; democrat; democrats; emptysuit; ignorant; impeachobama; lazy; nostamina; noteleprompter; npd; obama; obamaregime; overwhelmed; unfit; uselessreader; worthless
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To: Kickass Conservative

Or, When Obozo Fails, America Wins!

Pray for America


41 posted on 03/07/2009 9:27:56 PM PST by bray (Welcome to the USSA!)
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To: EDINVA

Wouldn’t you love to see Obama live what John McCain had to endure? No way that twinkie would make it through.


42 posted on 03/07/2009 9:28:24 PM PST by derllak
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To: Rocky

“All he can do is talk.”

And he can’t do that without his teleprompter...


43 posted on 03/07/2009 9:29:06 PM PST by Semper Mark (Communism is Socialism with a gun to your head.)
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To: RobbyS
He has come a long way on a gift of gab and personal charm.

This is a useful article because it identifies one relevant aspect of Obama. His toxic agenda aside, he is a perfect example of a goobermint bureaucrat or a functionary for a Nonprofit NGO: what he likes most and does best is sit and have meetings. Talk.

He does little work, grabs credit from those who do more, and -- meets with other bureaucratic types who share his aversion to actual work.

Come to think of it, this is what a community organizer does--meets with people and jacks his jaws and talks ya-ya with the pols to milk some cash out of them.

44 posted on 03/07/2009 9:31:58 PM PST by hinckley buzzard
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To: Kaslin
Yet again I am surprised that people are surprised.

How is it possible that so many people, able to glean what they could of Obama’s record of “accomplishment”, able to form judgments about the nature of a man who wrote 2 books about himself by 45, able to see the protection afforded him by the press and the willful disregard for Obama’s gaffes along the way, able to ascertain his associations in his personal and professional life ... how is it possible that anyone is surprised now by what sort of person Barrack Obama turns out to be?

I mean I can understand the millions of sheeple beating blindly about the ‘historical’ aspects, and buying the bullshit hook line and sinker because there was nothing really presented to them to cause any dissonance.

But professionals, people who should have keen sensibilities ... did none of them at any point, being exposed to the questions about accomplishments, judgment, character, work ethic, etc., give any consideration to what they were seeing, and what it would mean if Obama was handed the most demanding executive position in the world???

Again, I am surprised that anyone is surprised.

45 posted on 03/07/2009 9:32:26 PM PST by spodefly (This is my tag line. There are many like it, but this one is mine.)
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To: THX 1138
No, unfortunately, I think we're stuck with this bozo...

If he tarnishes the Democrat brand enough, they'll stand by and let us take him down. That's why Nixon quit. The GOP said they would not defend an impeachment.

46 posted on 03/07/2009 9:33:05 PM PST by buccaneer81 (Bob Taft has soiled the family name for the next century.)
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To: Kaslin; Doogle; Jet Jaguar
He's just a talking head with a teleprompter.

Who knows who runs the executive branch.
47 posted on 03/07/2009 9:34:09 PM PST by BIGLOOK (Keelhaul Congress! It's the sensible solution to restore Command to the People.)
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To: EDINVA
I think Obama's stamina is OK but he just has two big stumbling blocks--he doesn't want to work very hard, and he doesn't know how to do anything very useful.

His primary threat is his ability to get other grimfaced apparatchiks to do his dirty work while he stays serenely above it all.

48 posted on 03/07/2009 9:35:00 PM PST by hinckley buzzard
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To: Kaslin

Interesting.


49 posted on 03/07/2009 9:35:53 PM PST by Nephi (Like the failed promise of Fascism, masquerading as Capitalism? You're gonna love Marxism.)
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To: Kaslin

He’s not lazy - he’s entirely consistant. He’s been doing the exact same thing he’s doing now his entire life. He is a professional front, and he makes no bones about it. He works out, eats well, parties, and says what he’s supposed to say while other people put things in front of him to sign. There are absolutely no surprises going on here at all, and to be shocked at this point is simply tedious.


50 posted on 03/07/2009 9:38:30 PM PST by Talisker (When you find a turtle on top of a fence post, you can be damn sure it didn't get there on it's own.)
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To: BIGLOOK

I wonder how poor ole Hillary feels about this?

Or does she have something on him?


51 posted on 03/07/2009 9:38:42 PM PST by Jet Jaguar (Atlas Shrugged Mode: ON)
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To: Kaslin

He as well as Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter should have never been President of the United States. They are clearly not up to the task as none of them cared a flip about America or it’s people.


52 posted on 03/07/2009 9:38:56 PM PST by freekitty (Give me back my conservative vote.)
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To: buccaneer81
"High crimes and misdemeanors"

That's what you have to make stick.

The dims won't go along with an impeachment just because the guy is a bum. Besides, Nancy and Harry have to love this. They get to run the country while Obambi sleeps 'til noon...

53 posted on 03/07/2009 9:39:18 PM PST by THX 1138
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To: elk
"To pen an ode upon the Oil-of-Bob,
Is all sorts of a job.
(Signed) Snob."
(From E.A. Poe's The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq.)
54 posted on 03/07/2009 9:43:21 PM PST by Lexinom
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To: Kaslin

Beyond words.


55 posted on 03/07/2009 9:43:59 PM PST by Salvation ( †With God all things are possible.†)
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To: THX 1138
Besides, Nancy and Harry have to love this. They get to run the country while Obambi sleeps 'til noon...

They love it for now. When the money drys up, when the threats are more frequent than the praise, when they see the potential end of their petty reigns, they'll cut any President loose. Professional politicians are as much driven by the survival instinct as the cockroach. It's all about them.

56 posted on 03/07/2009 9:47:24 PM PST by buccaneer81 (Bob Taft has soiled the family name for the next century.)
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To: derllak

well, actually I wouldn’t want ever again to see another American go thru what McCain did, but I can’t even imagine Obama (if he’d ever have put on the uniform) surviving the first week in one of the Vietnamese prisoner camps. Forget about the patriotism, he just doesn’t have the character.

Almost daily I wonder how it is that three times now, we’ve watched adolescent males defeat genuine men, war heroes, to serve as POTUS. We have become addicated to form over substance, and that does not bode well for this nation’s future.


57 posted on 03/07/2009 9:47:26 PM PST by EDINVA
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To: Kaslin
He's a puppet. Always has been.


58 posted on 03/07/2009 9:48:17 PM PST by CheneyChick
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To: Jet Jaguar

Hmmm.....some one broke into the State Dept’s passport records. Sandy Burglar?. Nah.....he’s controversial and off the list for now. Joe Wilson.......? Nah....same thing. How many other career people were left over in State that were appointed by Slick Willie?


59 posted on 03/07/2009 9:48:32 PM PST by BIGLOOK (Keelhaul Congress! It's the sensible solution to restore Command to the People.)
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To: Kaslin

I would love it if somebody unplugged his teleprompter - on a regular basis.


60 posted on 03/07/2009 9:49:46 PM PST by CheneyChick
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