Posted on 06/01/2010 3:58:16 AM PDT by Zakeet
Would someone remind us again why the nation elected this man to be president? A man with no resume, a man with no experience in running anything other than a political campaign, a man who is ignorant of history, economics, and technology? A man who is shallow and lazy? A man who shares neither character nor temperament with the American people in this vast republic? How did this happen?
Voters were smitten by the ideological handmaidens of identity politics and the promise of big government. The identity politics substituted a cosmetic profile for character and experience. The promise was that big government has the benevolent power and enlightened expertise to remake America from the top down into a more capable, more caring, kinder, gentler, and more respected place.
What we've received instead was on display at the president's long-awaited press conference in the last week of May. Only a partisan or a fool could deny the irredeemable failure of these ideological handmaidens, the genius of Obama's shrinking presidency. No amount of posturing, buffing up, or Q&A briefing book drills could hide the reality that this man is on a raft at sea accompanied by an equally bewildered boatload of companions who have no idea how they arrived in such deep water, hundreds of miles from land, and with no clue that they are in trouble, let alone what to do about it.
What we've received instead from the ideology of identity politics and big government has been the spread of competency and accountability so thin that the federal government is utterly incapable of defending our shores and borders from invasion -- one by sea in the form of a massive crude oil slick, the other by land in the waves of illegal immigrants flooding Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California. In utter exasperation, the citizens of Arizona finally took matters into their own hands, only to be vilified by Obama and his cohorts, who have neither the will nor the capacity to do anything about it.
Identity politics is where grievance-mongering and class resentment intersect with entitlement agitation and representational profiling. Those who use the currency of identity politics appeal to the ideals of justice and fair distribution of resources and outcomes. But in reality they prey on those who are underprivileged and dependent, making claims of dispossession against those who have enjoyed success and independence derived from their own sweat, equity, and competence.
Leaders who devote all of their energy and emotional capital to identity politics instead of creating a competent, skills-based organization soon discover that when critical decisions need to be made and highly skilled resources need to be mobilized, nobody is around who knows how to do it. Such leaders, eventually tuned out and abandoned by even their former acolytes, become irrelevant, easily overwhelmed by events and rivals, taking their organizations -- even a nation -- down with them.
ObamaCare was the progeny of a shrinking president preoccupied with identity politics accompanied by big government ideology and not much else, floated on the emotional chaise of justice and fair distribution. Yet its proponents thoroughly disregarded the vast, complex, and highly skilled bureaucracy needed to attain those ideals in a brand new, centralized, top-down social engineering monstrosity. It will require a bureaucracy ten times the size of the Pentagon.
And now we are watching in slow-motion agony the failure of identity politics and big government unwilling and unable to cope with the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster, gradually revealed like a developing image from a Polaroid instant print. Identity politics assured that no one with any skills or experience would occupy the top jobs in Obama's administration needed to navigate a crisis of this magnitude.
And where oh where is the president, anyhow? Playing another round of golf and hosting the Duke University women's basketball team.
So what's the alternative? Simple. The ideology of limited government. Why? Because limited government is the antithesis of identity politics. The ideology of limited government wouldn't need to rely on overextended organization competencies to manage vast and complex bureaucracies because those bureaucracies would be unnecessary and wouldn't exist. Without identity politics, people who actually know what they're doing could occupy key jobs.
Limited government has to assemble and target just those competencies needed to carry out the limited duties envisioned in the U.S. Constitution, such as providing for the common defense, facilitating interstate commerce and a monetary system, and defending the rights reserved to the people. Everything else can be better-managed by private enterprise, where distributed self interest can gather competencies in units small enough to accomplish something useful.
Identity politics combined with incompetence have exposed the absurdity in the ambitions of big government and made Obama the weakest, most anemic and flaccid president in the modern era. The Latinate word would be diminutive. In simple Saxon tongue, the word is small. This is Obama's presidency.
Good post. Obama is not the cause of the problem he is merely a symptom. The real fault are those who voted for him and support his ideaology.
Feckless is good! I sarcastically use “Fearless Leader”.... You may remember in the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons, Boris and Natasha reported to “Fearless Leader”.....
He’s the American Idol President. This is about what one would expect from such a person.
Would someone remind us again why the nation elected this man to be president?
White Guilt, built up over decades of Media propaganda.
Comprehensive left-leaning editorializing from that centrally controlled Media.
Public education's denial of the responsibility of freedom.
Demise of the family, where the father is the primary agent for personal responsibility (the mother agent for domestic love).
The phony intellectualism of Harvard University and the Ivy League.
Women and children falling for an image rather than reality, just like Hollywood.
Politicians in it for their own aggrandizement rather than the nation's.
There are a number of reasons, just like there are a number of reasons I am not a billionaire like George Soros. Or like there are a number of reasons it is possible to build a cable-stayed bridge across the Rhine. Whether they can be identified and properly adjusted depends on the courage to face the truth, about one's self, about nature. Oregonians and Minnesotans have got to be the stupidest citizens in the hemisphere.
I know that much is made of the American Idol fixation. But I believe that B.O. was exactly that—a manufactured star who merely had to learn how to walk across a stage and deliver a few scripted lines. The dumb masses simply attached to him all the fantasies of their pitiful lives. I live in a very conservative rural area in the South. However, at my local gym, even supposedly mature and wise older women would rather discuss their favorite American Idol and Dancing with the Stars contestants instead of substantive issues.
And the saddest thing........if a presidential election were held today the mind-numbed American electorate would return him to the presidency.
At least the Idols are put through their paces before being declared a winner. He is the nightmare of Affirmative Action.
AMEN!! That is the Democrats motto!!
I don't believe that is true any more. The election campaign - no matter the challenger - would sink him. The mask is off.
I pray every day for the removal of this cancer from the White House but my prayers seemingly go unanswered. What a sad and terrifying end to America we face.
..and Acorn, Soros, Bob Bauer keeping his background sealed. International campaign donations.
The answer is easy. GW and the GOP set us up for this Marxist Usurper. While the commies were coopting the Supreme Court, media, unions, education, religion and Wall Street they said nothing.
My husband and I both adore Rocky and Bullwinkle. And when things get tough, we play DVD’s of the 3 Stooges.....of course, we kind of have them in DC just now - Obama, Pelosi, and Reid......they just aren’t as clever as Larry, Mo and Curly....
So, what are you doing to get rid of that government education system? That is the problem. Remove your kids from it! If I had had any kids, I would never have allowed them near a government school.
November looms!
Anyone want to take bets on whether the Duke lacrosse team that won the national championship yesterday ever gets invited to the White House?
To be fair to the community-organizer-in-chief, he’s the first in our country’s history to deliver 100% on the fundamental reasons for his election. He was elected to be diverse, and he checked the box “African-American” on his census. That’s all that the majority of his supporters wanted from him.
Perhaps, now that we’ve accomplished that worthy goal, it’s time to step up the national debate on whether a society in which “my four little children will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character” is a better society.
Obama was the answer to many leftists dreams. He was one of their own, an academic leftist (like another disaster—Woodrow Wilson), and he would finally implement the total leftist agenda something they’ve been hoping for decades. And naturally the leftist media went along themselves all grads of leftist academia. Most Dem voters are sheep, so they too believed the lies. Not too difficult to figure out how he got elected. I still think he was helped enormously by the government-initiated financial disaster weeks before the election. Remember before that happened McCain-Palin were ahead in many polls. But I believe Obama’s luck has finally run out.
LOL! Great description!
There´s only one thing big about him, however, and that´s his capacity for hate and resentment. I could stand it if he were just tiny and ineffectual, but I think he´s going to do something to make himself feel big and powerful: in some way he´s going to express this hate and resentment, because he wants to bring us down to his level.
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