The Incredible Shrinking Man

A Deficit of Trust

As President Obama delivered his first State of the Union address, (his address last February to a joint session of Congress was not an official State of the Union address), many were waiting to see whether Obama would now “get it”. After all the public rejection of the Health Care bill, was Obama going to be hoisted on his own petard of Obama Care? Even the morally corrupt, but politically astute Bill Clinton knew when to drop that albatross.

In the Democrat pantheon of presidents, no one represents and demonstrated the political savvy of an accomplished politician more than Clinton, by moving to a centrist position in his first term after losing Democrat control of Congress for the first time in forty years. Of course, with the current President no such flexibility exists, as the American public is becoming painfully aware that Obama is nothing more than a one trick socialist pony. The only aspect of Obama’s State of the Union speech that was Clintonesque was the length and an obligatory attempt at expressing “I feel your pain” empathy for the US economy.

The Obama story of ascendancy and descent embodies both of the two essential plots of all novels - the hero goes on a journey and a stranger comes to town. The journey of Obama has been well documented by a sycophantic media - rising from a broken home and culminating in a Harvard law school education; conveniently omitting a plethora of socialistic training and friendships and a complete absence of documented academic performance – that’s the journey of the hero.

What became quickly apparent on the campaign trail was the man with the sonorous voice and rhapsodic rhetoric could make trite and hackneyed expressions sound elegant and philosophical…….like hope and change.

Now the stranger comes to town – Washington. Along the way Obama forgot, or never knew, that the reciprocal of hope and change is trust. In mathematics it’s called the multiplicative inverse, meaning the ratio of unity to a given quantity by which the given quantity is multiplied to produce unity. Without trust, “hope and change” are just vacuous words without meaning or purpose ….no unity.

The President has systematically overdrawn his trust account through his “we won” expressed and demonstrated behavior. The nation’s first “post racial/post partisan” president’s approval rating has dropped further than any other president in his first year, effectively neutering a super majority advantage in the House and the Senate (until Scott Brown’s election).

In virtually all areas of policy sans bipartisanship and transparency – national security (domestic and foreign), economic, health, climate change, et al have produced failure - a seriously stalled economy with ever increasing unemployment, failed stimulus plan, mirandized terrorists, grossly incompetent cabinet and administration czars ……and that’s just touching the surface.

No president in memory has made as many speeches in his first year, as if Obama actually thought he could impose his far left ideological will on his audience. An interesting phenomenon occurred during the process, the law of diminishing returns kicked in, and the words and syntax that once marveled fell flat and seemed as if they were written by his ubiquitous teleprompter.

So it was reasonable to assume that Obama, in collaboration with his brain trust, a staff that New York Times conservative columnist David Brooks calls the most intelligent ever assembled by a U.S. President, would be able to craft a State of the Union speech that would acknowledge the majority of the nation’s views and deliver a statesman state of the union address with a commitment to honor the will of the people.

The State of the Union Speech – The Sound and the Fury

Our President, in his finest finger wagging socialist professor style, delivered seventy excruciating minutes of “more of the same”, in a panoply of delivery styles –condescension, arrogance, whining, combativeness, scolding, petulance, defiance, and of course egoism.

In a curiously disjointed speech, with the triple digit exercise of personal pronouns, President Obama essentially tossed the gauntlet before the American people. Exclaiming “I don’t quit”, as he continued “Change has not come fast enough. As hard as it may be, as uncomfortable and contentious as the debates may be, it’s time to get serious about fixing the problems that are hampering our growth.”

Among the many lowlights of the address was the proposed three year freeze on most discretionary domestic spending, beginning in 2011, after the debt ceiling has been raised. He also announced he will issue an executive order creating a bipartisan task force to recommend ways to reduce the deficit……the Senate recently blocked a similar proposal.

Obama urged the Senate to follow the House and pass a second jobs bill as its first order of business this year. Yeah, the first one really worked swell.

The President urged Senate passage of climate legislation to help the country deal with global warming and shift toward cleaner energy sources and help create jobs. Our President still supports the global warming scam.

Proving he doesn’t quit, the President called for a continuance of efforts to overhaul the health care system.

In a move to get college students on free government entitlements, Obama proposed capping student loan repayments at 10 percent of income and forgiving all student loan debt after 20 years, or after 10 years if the student enters public service. With the government now the exclusive provider of college loans, wonder how many of those loans will be repaid?

In a particularly magnanimous gesture, after shutting Republicans out of all meaningful legislation discussion with the super majority Democrats, Obama proposed monthly meetings with both the Democratic and Republican leadership in Congress.

The lowest of lows was achieved, a first for a state of the union address, when Obama attempted to bully the co-equal judicial branch of government, the Supreme Court, by urging lawmakers to pass a bill to undo a recent Supreme Court ruling that allows companies and labor unions to exercise First Amendment rights to make independent expenditures in candidate elections.

Justice Samuel Alito one of the justices in the majority in the decision under attack, shook his head as he heard the president’s summary of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission mouthing the words “not true.”

State of the Union addresses are opportunities for presidents to take or lose command. Obama's poll numbers on how he handles major issues have been dropping; a majority of Americans do not support his management of the economy, taxes and other issues. Unemployment is in double digits and terrorism fears are rising.

It was an opportunity lost. Either President Obama doesn’t get it or he does and just doesn’t care. The latter appears closer to the truth.

The Anatomy of a One Term President

The 1957 Sci Fi classic film The Incredible Shrinking Man presented a hero, Scott, who became exposed to a radioactive mist while on a boat off the California coast, thus beginning the gradual but inexorable shrinking of Scott. Near the end of the movie Scott has been reduced to a size that allows him to walk through a space in the grid of a window screen as he walks through the space he muses “The unbelievably small and the unbelievably vast eventually meet, like the closing of a gigantic circle,”something akin to Barack Obama assuming the office of President of the United States.

It’s a long way from Pan-President, the messianic leader of the world, to becoming a one term president. But the first quarter of Obama’s presidency has been abysmal in achieving any measurable positive results.

An ever increasing number of Americans see the direction Obama is moving the country away from capitalism towards a redistribution of wealth with more government control. The man whose bust Obama reportedly removed from the oval office, Winston Churchill, said it best when asked to compare Capitalism with Socialism, “The inherent vice of capitalism is the uneven division of blessings, while the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal division of misery”. The overwhelming majority of Americans find the vice of capitalism vastly superior to the virtue of socialism.

After one year in office, it is reasonable to deduce that the president’s character, personality, beliefs and ability has had ample opportunity to be revealed. And so it is with Barack Obama.

As far as character is concerned, while Obama’s flaws don’t rise to the Bill Clinton level of amorality, clearly he’s a man who is quite comfortable with prevarication and misrepresentation. The best thing Obama has going for him is his personality, he’s a narcissistic charmer, but the veneer is wearing thin. Obama’s beliefs spiritually and politically are radical fringe. Spiritually he’s a mixture of black liberation theology and Islam. Politically he’s a blend of Marxist, Statist, and Socialist. His abilities are not well suited for President, but would probably serve him well as a college professor and a community organizer.

The malaise that hangs like a storm cloud over the nation is not likely to dissipate during the next three years. Not since the redoubtable Jimmy Carter have we seen a president so ill equipped in all aspects of governance. The State of the Union speech pretty well provided oral testimony to the incorrigible nature of President Obama’s agenda.

Churchill captured it best in his time - “A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.”