A Presidency Built on Bad Faith

The American people are discovering what many political analysts have understood for some time: Obama’s default political tactic is dishonesty.

On Thanksgiving day, CNN reported a new low for the president’s approval numbers in the key swing state of Ohio. The president fell to a stunning 34% approval (a 6-point drop since June) and a devastating 61% disapproval. It doesn’t require much digging to understand the reason for Obama’s free fall: the predominantly negative opinion of Obamacare (35%/59%) and, more importantly, the collapse of the president’s credibility. The poll found 57% deem the president dishonest/untrustworthy, while only 39% trust him.

Politico Magazine’s Rich Lowry has a new moniker for Obama’s reign: “The Bad-Faith Presidency.” In a brutal condemnation of President Obama’s legacy of deception, Lowry argues that one of Obama’s “signal strengths” is bad faith. The real crisis of Obamacare for the president is not the rollout faceplant, but the revelation of the depth of Obama’s personal dishonesty in his willingness to manipulate the public.

At the end of the day, the root of President Obama’s mendacity on Obamacare was simple: He didn’t dare tell people how the law would work. He couldn’t tell people how the law would work.
Forthrightness was the enemy. It served no useful purpose and could only bring peril, and potentially defeat. It had to be banished. Instead of candor, Obama made the sale on the basis of dubious blandishments and outright deceptions.
If this is the only way to pass your signature initiative—and a decades-long goal of your party—it ought to give you pause. But Obama was a natural at delivering sweeping and sincere-seeming assurances that weren’t true. This kind of thing is his métier.

The naturalness of the deception is what is so disturbing for those who are just now discovering the president’s propensity for dissimulation. However, Lowry argues, Obama’s mendacious Obamacare PR campaign is simply his method of operation—and that’s precisely why he’s been such an effective progressive:

All politicians are prone to shaving the truth, giving themselves the benefit of the doubt and trying to appear more reasonable than they are. Obama has made it an art form. Bad faith is one of his signal strengths as a politician, and makes him one of the greatest front men progressivism has ever had.

Obama’s deep-seated progressivism requires deception and manipulation because it runs so counter to the ideology of a majority of Americans.

He will never admit his deep bias toward the growth of the federal government for its own sake, or that he doesn’t care that much if Iran gets the bomb, or that he is liquidating the American leadership role in the Middle East. No, no—he is just trying to make government work, giving diplomacy a chance and pivoting to Asia, respectively.

The president's primary means of political success has necessarily revolved around repackaging himself, shaping public perception to conceal his progressive ambitions.

The president styles himself a committed pragmatist. At a fundraiser outside of Seattle the other day, he averred, “I’m not a particularly ideological person.” He just happened to risk Democratic control of Congress to advance the cause of nationalized health insurance. And happened to insist on the left-most plausible version of the law. And happened to defend it with every power at his disposal.

Of course the president will not fully reveal himself, at least while he’s still playing president. He will continue to wear the mask of pragmatism and sensibility that helped get him elected. He will disavow being a progressive ideologue—and hope that the American people will forget the damage the reality of Obamacare has done to his rhetorical influence. But it might be too late, as more and more Americans have begun to understand that this is a presidency built on bad faith.

A long winded round about way of saying this arrogant, narcissistic prick is a f’ing liar.Anyone could have seen that if they looked and listened to him. But the great majority of people didn’t. They wanted to believe this ‘’Magic Negro’’ was the new Messiah, the man who was going to bring about a Nirvana when ‘’The sea levels receded and the planet began to heal.’’ That statement alone is the most insipid, nauseating and embarrassing piece of garbage I have ever heard. How anyone can not only say such nonsense but how anyone listening to that would accept it and believe it is beyond me. But therein lies the truth about this liar. The fools who voted for him-twice, wanted to believe it. And now people are ‘’beginning to wake up’’? It’s a little too late for ‘’waking up’’. The thief has broken into the house, cleaned it out and is gone.

Are you kidding me?

The Obama Problem is complex and multilayered.

A faction of his supporters (we don't know how many) are as dishonest as he is. They are waiting for The Revolution. "Think of it always, speak of it never".

Since this group ALREADY KNOWS that Obamacare will fail, is in fact designed to fail, they DON'T CARE when the failures are brought to their attention. In fact, their love for "Obama" grows, every time he demonstrates that he has fooled us.

"Obama" is President because he discovered a treasure trove of votes on the Left, real honest-to-Lenin communists who never had a candidate to vote for until 2008.

While he has deployed this domestic Red Army, and filled the ranks of the Executive Service with its members, he has (mostly) done two other things successfully: 1) Kept the loyalty of non-communist Democrats, and 2) Terrorized and terrified the GOP to prevent THEM going for the corresponding big bucket of votes on the Right, folks who don't vote because both Bushes, Dole, McCain and Romney are too far to the left.

His loyal opposition continues to act as if he's in the same game as they are, when nothing could be further from the truth.

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