I’ve long argued against the idea that Obama is a Manchurian candidate, secretly working to install the Caliphate in the United States. He reminds me more of a certain strain of progressive with whom I am very familiar — the pot smoking, Che t-shirt wearing, craft beer drinking college kid who doesn’t have to work and doesn’t believe in markets or property. (Except for his own property.) A group that doesn’t understand that people really think differently and earnestly believes that conversations will lead to world peace. A group that never has to fight for anything.
Sure, they can be good friends and roommates; at least one will have a foosball table. Geopolitics and decisiveness, though, aren’t their strengths.
This is the crowd from which Obama emerged. A crowd that refuses to believe our differences as humans are anything more than superficial. A crowd so blinded by its belief that everyone is the same that it steadfastly refuses to accept the reality that we are not the same. A crowd that believes that if we only had more dialogue then all the bad people will go away. That there will never be tough choices.
Obama, conventional dorm-room philosopher progressive that he is, never evolved beyond this worldview. And this worldview, this inability to accept that some people actually do believe, really believe, to the point where they will kill for those beliefs, causes him to say some horribly asinine things.
If he had been “an adviser to ISIS,” Mr. Obama added, he would not have killed the hostages but released them and pinned notes on their chests saying, “Stay out of here; this is none of your business.” Such a move, he speculated, might have undercut support for military intervention.
Ladies and Gentleman, our Commander in Chief. Feeling confident? I’m not. And I still don’t think he’s a secret Muslim, but I am starting to think he’s a genuine idiot. That’s just one paragraph and, as Iowahawk said, there’s “3 spit-takes in every paragraph.” But for now, let’s focus on that one as it encapsulates the entirety, the enormity, of the Obama presidency.
He may be an adult. He may hold some degrees. But he’s never mentally moved out of the dorm, out of the joint subcommittee meeting pontification. We’re talking about savages who will behead you for not accepting Allah. Meanwhile, Obama is talking about pinning notes to chests.
Thankfully, ISIS does not yet seem to be an international threat. Thus we theoretically have time to develop a cogent strategy beyond a coalition of the U.S. and the “not so willing.” Which is great because this latest CF has fully defined what it means to be President Obama. It is not defined by leadership; it is defined by poor consulting.
He consults with the DOJ on Operation Choke Point. He consults with the EPA on climate legislation. He consults with labor unions on immigration. He occasionally consults members of his own party or business leaders. He takes action. He never lays out a positive, strategic vision for anything in a way that unites a broad coalition around his ideas. In the business world, he’d lose his consulting gig for being so horrific. If only we the people were so fortunate. Instead, we are stuck with this clown for 2 more years and he’s in no danger of losing his gig.
And, to make matters worse, he’s proud of being obtuse and feckless.
“Oh, it’s a shame when you have a wan, diffident, professorial president with no foreign policy other than ‘don’t do stupid things,’” guests recalled him saying, sarcastically mocking his adversaries. “I do not make apologies for being careful in these areas, even if it doesn’t make for good theater.”
No, it makes for a joke, a mockery. To call this theater is an affront to the word theater.
This is what we are stuck with. A man so self-assured, he thinks his words can solve crises. A man with his own head buried so far up his own posterior, he thinks suggesting that terrorists pin notes to hostages’ chests is wise. The leader of the free world is President Choom Gang Von Participation Trophy waxing eloquent on the quad about how we could have peace if we all just dropped some ecstasy and hugged it out.
Of course, this is nothing to worry about, as adviser to noted badass Jimmy Carter Zbigniew Brzezinski assures us, “[Obama] is not a softy. But he’s a person who tries to think through these events so you [sic] can draw some long-term solutions.” Or as Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and former Bush official, said:
“This is someone who, more than most in the political world, is comfortable with gray rather than the black and white. Some in the political world do operate in the black and white and are more-quote unquote decisive, and that’s a mixed blessing. He clearly falls on the side of those who are slow or reluctant to decide because deciding often forces you into a more one-sided position than you’re comfortable with.”
Of course not. Being forced into a position, making decisions, might cause the buck to stop at Obama’s desk and that is something that he is not amenable to. Much better to wax ineloquent, make everyone else culpable, and avoid making any actual decisions. In the short-run, it can be a winning strategy. In the long run, well, we all know what flows uphill. Obama may prefer speechifying to leading, but eventually his hubris and middling intellect will catch up with him. Hopefully, that happens before it catches up to us.