Obama’s 1-Year Report Card (cont.)

Obama’s 1-Year Report Card (cont.)

By

Ken Eliasberg

In grading Obama I believe a couple of introductory observations and/or disclaimers are in order. First, I have to give the devil his due; I think that, despite the complaints and protests of his supporters on the left -i.e. that he was insufficiently aggressive in pursuit of their goal, An American Welfare State - he did his level best to bring home their bacon. He just underestimated the scope of his mandate and, as a consequence, overplayed his hand. Republicans didn’t hold him back; all that they did — to their credit at last — is not come to his aid in destroying our country. He was defeated by his own Party, not by any muscular effort on the part of Republicans (if, indeed, Republicans are capable of a muscular effort; to me the 2 concepts — Republican and muscular effort — have come to be almost oxymoronic).

Secondly, I have grown weary of his blaming everything on Bush, unless, of course, it seems positive, in which case he will more than willingly take credit for it. What happened to the Harry Truman approach — i.e. the buck stops here? Truman, an unassuming and uncharismatic fellow was the last Democrat for whom I had some admiration. Why? Because he was the last Democrat to have a trace of character and courage, and because he accomplished a great deal. I want to make it clear that my criticism of Obama is neither personal, on the one hand, nor a defense of George Bush on the other. I am opposed to Obama strictly because I believe that his policies, if implemented, would destroy America — not just financially bankrupt us but remove the heart of what makes America great — the opportunity to live free and to improve one’s circumstances on the basis of his or her personal effort and talent, i.e. a meritocracy. That said, in laying some — just some, mind you — of the blame at the feet of George Bush he is absolutely correct; it is not all Obama’s fault — just most of it.

I was going to, and will eventually, do a column on the relationship of Bush and Obama to Hoover and FDR, and it will be entitled Bush Is To Obama What Hoover Was To FDR — COVER. Hoover, an exceptionally bright guy, by the way, engaged in some incredibly stupid acts to ward off the impending economic catastrophe that was the great depression, e.g. The Smoot Hawley Tariff Act and his treatment of the banks. FDR, rather than reversing these efforts (which he denounced in his campaign against Hoover), not only continued them, but doubled down on them, thus deepening and prolonging the depression. Indeed, 1937 some 4 years after FDR’s taking office was one of the worst depression years, and we needed WWII to finally get us out of that economic sinkhole.

Nonetheless, our left-wing academics have been successful in laying the entire mess at Hoover’s doorstep while lionizing FDR (who really was a modest mind and a less-than-great president). And, to a certain extent, that’s what’s happening now — it’s all Bush’s fault all the time. For God’s sake, Obama, man up — you want credit if things go well, then be man enough to take some blame when they don’t. Oops, I forget, he is a post-modern Democrat, which means that he will not take responsibility for anything that goes wrong, unless it is absolutely impossible for him to avoid doing so.

Again, I am not coming to George Bush’s defense; I leave that task to others to whom it might come more easily. Frankly, (1) other than a war which needed to be fought (despite the mindless criticism of a bunch of gutless and brainless left-wing anti-war know nothings — is there any war in our history that these mindless sell-outs would have been willing to fight?), and which he had the courage to fight; (2) a couple of good Supreme Court nominees (which he almost seemed to back into); and (3) the reduction of taxes, which was, and is, absolutely essential to the continued viability of our free enterprise system, George Bush was a disaster for the Republican Party, and, as a consequence, not too good for America. Don’t get me wrong, he is, as his father is, a decent man. And he was, as his father also was, a mediocre president who did little, if anything, to advance the conservative cause. Why not? Because neither he nor his father is a conservative; they are Rockefeller Republicans who are, at best, moderates.

George Bush ushered in the era of conservative big government, spending money like a drunken Democrat, and papering over this exercise in moderation with terms like “compassionate” conservatism, and, more recently, “heroic” conservatism; the former term suggesting that conservatives were not previously compassionate and

the latter apparently justifying the move toward unlimited government. It was coined by his favorite speech writer, Michael Gerson, and is the title of Gerson’s recently published book. A friend of mine attended a presentation by Gerson and reported to me that he sounded like a socialist. And that really was Bush’s undoing — he lost his base of support.

Conservatism is the heart and soul of the Republcan Party; lose the conservative base and the Party is nothing but Democrat lite — which to many is what George W. Bush appeared at times to be. One of the finishing touches of his Administration was bailing out the auto industry (which was no more than bailing out the United Auto Workers, among others) which was, and remains, an error of catastrophic proportions (one that provides Obama with plenty of cover) — even though what Obama has done in just 12 short months exponentially increases the damage wrought by Bush’s unfortunate error.

In summary, while I believe that Obama has been, and will continue to be, one of America’s worst presidents, George W. Bush made a number of unfortunate mistakes which set the table for our current Commander-in-Chief. But George Bush is not responsible for electing Obama - we are all responsible for Obama; in the final analysis, the electorate must take responsibility for the men (or women) who we put in office - they didn’t get there by accident. We have a mess — one that Obama did indeed inherit, but, unfortunately, one that he has made considerably worse than the one that he inherited.

In addressing his first year in office, I would like to divide my assessment into several categories, i.e. (1) his approach, (2) his style, (3) his substance, and (4) his competence in dealing with the the two policy areas over which our chief executive is called upon to preside — (a) domestic and (b) foreign policy (to be continued).

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 at 1:42 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

.