End of the Magnificent Obsession

While the American obsession with Barack Obama may not be over, it may finally be descending from the stratosphere. How can I tell? Just watch the mainstream press. The man who was raised to Messiah status over the past 12 months, the man who could do no wrong, the one who was going to save us all…has been dropped like a hot potato. Or maybe the press is following my number one rule of life: when you are in trouble…lay low!!

Last week, Obama had a fiasco news conference about his government health care takeover, offering little new in the face of a Congressional Budget Office report which has blown the plan out of the water. He even declined to be covered by the same policy he hopes to foist on you. He finished with a flourish calling the Cambridge Police Department stupid vis-à-vis his friend, Harvard professor Dr. Henry Gates who decided to right 400 years of racial oppression on his front porch while surrounded by police sent there to protect his property.

So with racism abounding, and his legislative agenda limping around in circles, and his poll numbers plummeting, the mainstream press decided to lead off the news with a flurry of Michael Jackson stories and a bride and groom doing a dance down the aisle to get married (actually, it was pretty good!!) I guess the rule is “out of sight, out of mind.”

Barack Obama is learning a political lesson. If you are going to tax and spend, sooner or later you are going to run out of people to tax. In the case of health care, it is the suburban, middle to upper class independents in the northeastern part of the country that are experiencing buyer’s remorse now that he is going after them. It’s really not a good idea to raise the specter of government health care when 85% of Americans rate their health insurance as good to excellent, and the health care crisis is at bottom of the list of country concerns; especially after spending the country into oblivion his first 12 weeks in office.

More importantly, I think the country is beginning to see him for what he is. He is a radical tax and spend liberal/socialist with a chip on his shoulder. He gives a good speech with the tele-prompter. Take it away, and his true beliefs come out. Consider the following;

1) He was elected to be a post partisan president, who could bring people together. He has been the most partisan president I can remember in my lifetime. Even “W” could find common ground with Ted Kennedy. Obama’s entire legislative agenda has been so radical, it could not garner more than a few Republicans votes, and now the Blue Dog Democrats have come to their senses and are running towards the door. You won’t get re-elected in West Virginia supporting a San Francisco agenda. The Democratic tent just isn’t that big.

2) He was supposed to be a post racial president. But his off the teleprompter comment about the police and Dr. Gates show his true beliefs. You can judge a man by the company he keeps. President Obama had a penchant for racists and radicals, Dr. Wright, Dr. Gates…and Bill Ayers. He is certainly the president of black America, and to a degree Hispanic America, but when will be President of the people in the America who are pulling the freight?

3) He has failed to lead. Who is running the country? Obama is busy partying in France, in Hawaii, in Martha’s Vineyard while Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod are calling the shots. Obama is the black guy in the White House being told what to do by the radical left. His purpose is clear, cheerlead and sign what is put in front of him.

4) His foreign policy is a fiasco. The President of the World has lost the respect of the Europeans who have shifted to the right. The Russians ignore him. The Chinese lecture him. The Iranians, the Venezuelans, and the North Koreans laugh at him. God knows what the Arabs think. He bowed down to the King of Saudi Arabia. And the same press, who criticized Bush for military action in Iraq and the surge, is barely covering the rapid build of troops in Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires. Where are the peaceniks now?

This guy had better shift to the center and shift fast, or his presidency will implode and then we will have a problem. Of course, ideologues don’t care. Notwithstanding, the old Silent Majority is still there. It will destroy him.