Posted on 08/19/2010 4:59:34 AM PDT by Kaslin
The president of the United States has it hard enough without needlessly wading into, and fanning, local controversies. The economy is battered by sluggish growth, high unemployment, record annual deficits and near unsustainable national debt. Over 50 percent of the people now disapprove of Barack Obama's handling of these problems.
So why weigh in on hot-button issues that can only polarize people without solving anything?
Last summer, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, a scholar of African-American literature and history, got into a silly dispute with a local policeman. For some reason, President Obama, the leader of the free world, rushed to judgment and gratuitously announced that police Sgt. James Crowley and the local Cambridge, Mass., police had acted "stupidly." For relish, he added that police wrongly stereotype in general. Obama supporters wrote off the entire psycho-drama as a "teachable moment."
Arizona recently passed a bill designed to enforce existing immigration law and stop the enormous influx of illegal aliens into the state. Various groups, including the federal government, quickly made plans to sue the state. Yet various polls indicated that 70 percent of Americans agreed with the Arizona law, and dozens of states were planning similar legislation.
Nonetheless, the president also jumped into that acrimony -- well before the law went into effect. Obama and his attorney general alleged that Arizonans were promoting stereotyping, even though police were forbidden to question the immigration status of those who had not come into prior contact with law enforcement.
Most recently, Obama pontificated about the proposed mosque next to Ground Zero in lower Manhattan, in what his supporters might call a "teachable moment." The issue is not a legal one. Both sides recognize the legal right of Muslims to build mosques anywhere that local zoning ordinances permit them. Instead, the controversy pertains to common decency, and the nature of the funding and proponents of the project.
No matter: The president instead lectured his mostly Muslim audience that America respects the rights of all religions -- again, not the issue in question. A day later, in embarrassment, he backtracked a bit.
Where to start with all these teachable moments?
All these controversies involve issues addressed at the state and local level, with presidential action unnecessary. In such contentious matters, why intervene when Obama cannot do much other than polarize millions?
We have learned that President Obama has a bad habit of impugning the motives of those with whom he disagrees. In the Gates case, he rushed to condemn Crowley and the police. Arizonans were not to be seen as desperate citizens trying to enforce federal law, but instead derided as bigots who harass minorities when they go out to get ice cream. And in the mosque case, the president disingenuously implied that opponents of a Ground Zero mosque wanted to deny the legal right of Muslims to build religious centers.
Note that all three issues poll badly for the president, and belie his former image as a conciliator and healer.
Again, why does Obama go off message to sermonize about these seemingly minor things that so energize his opposition and make life difficult for his fellow Democrats?
First, off-the-cuff pontificating on extraneous issues is a lot easier than dealing with a bad economy, two wars and heightening tensions abroad. Sermonizing is a lot different than rounding up votes in Congress, fending off reporters at press conferences or dealing with aggressors abroad -- and it can also turn our attention away from near 10 percent unemployment and a heavily indebted government.
Second, Obama has spent most of his life around academics, lawyers, journalists and organizers. That insular culture tends to pontificate and lecture others far more than do action-oriented business people, soldiers, doctors and farmers -- the doers who are few and far between in this administration.
Third, as an Ivy League-trained lawyer and former Chicago community organizer, Obama embraces an overarching race/class/gender critique of the United States; the story of America is not so much about an exceptionally independent and prosperous people, a unique Constitution or a vibrant national past in promoting global freedom, but about how the majority oppressed various groups. Clearly, these local instances of purported grievances have excited the president -- and almost automatically prompt his customary but unproven declarations that the majority or establishment in each case is biased or unfair.
Obama should remember that successful presidents build bridges to solve national and international problems. They leave polarizing local controversies to divisive community organizers and partisan activists.
Er, on the contrary. Keep going, President Obama! With your help, the Democratic party will be wiped off the face of the earth.
Obama is a racist and a muslim.
FUBO
The phrase “a teachable moment” is becoming as annoying as the phrase “a perfect storm”.
“...Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, a scholar of African-American literature and history...”
And that, sir is why Harvard has become a joke.
I guess then, that should Harvard hire Gore (which they should, since he fits in perfectly with that faculty’s mental acuity) that Al Gore is a scholar of physics.
(My apologies to the Harvard physics department - one of the few academically respectable departments that exist there.)
Agreed.
Obama should remember that successful presidents build bridges to solve national and international problems. They leave polarizing local controversies to divisive community organizers and partisan activists.
Your answer is “he is successful at what he wants to do” he is solving that pesky little being a republic problem. He wants to alienate the jews and crush US international power. He is trying to cause division and he is a partisan activist.
“MISSION almost ACCOMPLISHED”
The Obama presidency has been the ‘Mother-of-all-Teachable-Moments’.
Obama and his MSM-choir focus on dividing Americans.
Every day, they feature a new profession or group
to hate in their THIRTY MINUTES OF HATE.
Last night the MSM featured .... Katrina and the GOP (SSDD).
The Obama Victory Mosque was conveniently ... ignored.
He does this to show how smart he is and he can't help it. Obama views himself as the modern day Jesus, the alpha and the omega. He is the know-all, end-all, be-all. He knows what he thinks, and if you think differently, you are wrong. Short reply: Arrogance.
Obama should remember that successful presidents build bridges to solve national and international problems. They leave polarizing local controversies to divisive community organizers and partisan activists.
Let me be perfectly clear, “successful presidents” are the operative words in this particular teachable moment!
Note to self: Never again say, “Teachable moment.” Consider substituting, “school of hard knocks,” “learn from your mistakes,” “I told you so,” or other concepts.
The problem with these “teachable moments” is that Odumba$$ never learns from them.
You can take a Sock Puppet out of the hateful “community organizers” who are intent on destroying American culture, but you can’t take the hateful “community organizer” out of the Sock Puppet.
This is the only pay grade that Bozo is trained to do!! He will never rise above this.
He was given the chance of a life-time to make black folks so proud of what he could have accomplished & make history while doing it - but he hasn't got a clue about character, values or anything more than not working & living on the taxpayers dime. Something he's done his entire useless life.
*** For some reason, President Obama, the leader of the free world, rushed to judgment***
Alas, George Bush Sr. did the same thing with the Rodney King incident.
*I guess then, that should Harvard hire Gore (which they should, since he fits in perfectly with that faculty’s mental acuity) that Al Gore is a scholar of physics.*
Then gore can teach the students how it is “several million degrees” 2KM beneath the Earth’s surface (which is much hotter than the surface of the Sun) and all of his fantasies about how leprechauns and unicorns and hen’s teeth are causing the Earth to heat up.
BTTT!
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