By Wes Pedersen
If Barack Obama were up for re-election right now, not next year, but right this day, he would likely be dumped from office, no matter what klutz might replace him.
His rating with the public is that pathetic. "Anyone else!" is a bumper sticker.
Even Mrs. Malaprop, the gaffe coughing Michelle Bachmann, is in the running for a presidential nomination of indeterminate party composition or true conviction.
What happened to the bright young man who was going make America sing happy songs again?
Ego happened. He started thinking he might after all be qualified to stand at the helm of the ship of state left sinking in the swampy mire of failed economics and arrogant Big Corporate-wartime politics left behind by George W. Bush.
Obama wanted us all to understand that he saw the big picture. Then we learned the extent of his vision. His myopia missed the real world of hurt and despair at home. He could not see that the problems of the unemployed, the mortgage stressed, and the states demanded priority attention, as did the plight of American men and women snared in two pointless wars in the Middle East.
Rather than immediately disencumbering the American people of the onerous burden of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he took on new military ventures. He would become Obama of Arabia, freeing the downtrodden there by financing, with money we did not have, the uprisings by mobs demanding an end to the harsh rule of the despots earlier American administrations had clung to as allies. He would go further: he would assume the power of the righteous, deciding which rulers should go and who should go.
He pronounced the Obama Doctrine: Any group of rebels anywhere on Planet Earth would get America’s financial and military aid regardless of who they were and what plans they might have for revitalizing the countries they were tearing apart. Victory would come marked Made in the USA.
Two foreign affairs wins came his way, After nearly ten years of hunting Osama bin Laden, the CIA found him and it fell to our president to give the order, on live television, for the assassination of the world’s most vile fugitive. Now Tripoli has fallen after months of being pounded by U.S./NATO bombers.
Those were truly remarkable events in an otherwise unremarkable presidency. The president is currently basking in whatever credit he can get from the fall of Tripoli and the certain end of the Gadaffi regime. The American public will surely give lasting credit to Obama for the demise of bin Laden. The defeat of Gadaffi will be weighed against its cost to the U.S. at a time of economic chaos at home. Meanwhile, the number of American deaths in the Afghan-Iraqi war zones continues apace.
At home, Obama’s presidential presumptions took a massive hit from voters demanding action to subdue a rebellious economy. The deficit he had been stoking with his overseas adventurism could no longer be ignored. Instead of the simple act of raising the debt ceiling to paper over the deficit, Obama and his conservative opponents went to war with one another, and came within hours of bringing the nation to a screeching halt.
No one won that battle. The public concept around the world was of fractious adult brats going at it in senseless combat. Obama, surely, was the major loser, but his conservative foes exposed their incompetence as well.
Obama’s insistence of taking another 10-day "working" beach vacation in the midst of economic turmoil and an election campaign has emphasized his near total lack of political and PR acumen.
His opponents in Congress could not wait to get out of town on hiatus to boast to constituents of their "victory" over Obama. Many learned quickly that their publics consider the show in Washington a shameful exposure of the nation’s soft economic/political underbelly.
No candidate has emerged who at this relatively late point who is really likely to be the Republican nominee.
The buzz favors Texas Governor Rick Perry, who oozes personality but offers a resume claiming credit for his state’s "economic miracle." That credit belongs in part to the largesse of federal programs.
Michigan’s Mitt Romney has the sort of economic savvy expected of a former governor and top corporate executive, but he lacks Perry’s Reagan-like "hey, look at me" charisma.
Minnesota Representative Michelle Bachman is a tea party favorite, but her reputation is constantly taking a knock as a result of her unerring talent for getting well-known historic facts totally bollixed up. Again, she is the Mrs. Malaprop of the campaign.
The political rivalry has produced two Perry-like miracles: (1) Some people out there really do still think Barack Obama could make an outstanding president. And (2), others cling to the belief that there still is a Republican party.
In truth, there is no organized party worthy of the name remaining in the U.S. The tea party is a ragtag assortment of ranting know-nothings whose ignorance of politics and economics is of gargantuan proportions. The Republicans and Democrats, in the battle of the deficit, signaled the absence of the rationality that had, through the blips of history, defined their right to assemble as recognized institutions for and of the people.
I’m with Allan Sloan, the senior editor of Fortune: "This whole fiasco just enrages me. And it ought to enrage anyone who wants the United States to act like a real country rather than some third-rate failed state run by fanatical factions that hate one another."
Sloan says he is resigning from the Republican party to protest its deterioration.
Good man. He’s quitting an organization that is but a husk of its old self, but it takes guts to quit an outfit you’ve been affiliated with for decades.
It would be nice to see him as a fellow independent.
* * *
Wes Pedersen is a retired Foreign Service Officer and principal at Wes Pedersen Communications and Public Relations Washington, D.C.
|