The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Obama’s Failed Presidency

Posted on | October 10, 2014 | 30 Comments

“Obama: Anatomy of a World Leader,” by Alex Gray (detail)

A disaster, a catastrophe, a cataclysm:

“I want to make government cool again,” he said.
Obama believed in government, and he was confident that his election would signal that the American people were ready to believe again, too.
As we approach the sixth anniversary of his election, the Obama presidency is in tatters. Obama’s policies, foreign and domestic, are widely seen as failed or failing. His approval rating is near its lowest point. Obama’s base of support is loyal and fierce and shrinking. Much of the country sees him as incompetent or untrustworthy, and government, far from being “cool,” is a joke on good days and a threat on bad ones.

Read the rest by Stephen F. Hayes. The problem is not unique to Obama. He’s just Jimmy Carter with more charisma.

The seldom-recognized fact is, liberalism is a wholly destructive force. People who speak of liberalism’s “successes” generally refuse to acknowledge that liberalism only “succeeds” in destroying things, or by cannibalizing pre-existing assets and spending borrowed money. Take for example, Social Security. It began with a 1% employee “contribution” and a 1% payroll tax. Now the Social Security tax is seven times as much, yet the program is hurtling toward bankruptcy, an endless fiscal nightmare. “Success!”

To what shall we compare liberalism? It’s like the ne’er-do-well son who has become addicted to heroin, and America is the prosperous family home which the liberal junkie is steadily robbing blind. Dad comes home from the office and the junkie son says, “Here, Dad, I bought you some Social Security.” Dad thanks him and then says, “Hey, what happened to my big screen TV?”

The junkie shrugs. Dad’s power tools go missing, then Mom’s jewelry, but the indulgent parents don’t want to admit the problem.

Neither does America want to admit its liberalism problem. Go back and look at the LBJ administration. LBJ promised us a “Great Society,” but all he did was destroy a Pretty Good Society. Whatever was wrong with America in 1963, it certainly wasn’t as bad as the hopeless mess LBJ left it in when Richard Nixon took office in 1969.

Yet even as liberalism destroys America, it creates constituencies dependent on a continuation of this destructive process. Entire states have been bought off by the Democrats: “Outside of a handful of states–California (49/48), New York (50/47), Massachusetts (50/47), Maryland, which benefits from the D.C. boom (56/43) — the numbers are brutal. Even blue states like Minnesota (40/57) and Oregon (44/54) have had it with Obama. And in his last redoubts, California et al., Obama is not much more than breaking even.”

College kids think Obama is awesome, but they’re prone to weird beliefs.

Race riots in St. Louis? There’s your “Hope and Change”!

How do you like it now?

 

Comments

30 Responses to “Obama’s Failed Presidency”

  1. ajpwriter
    October 10th, 2014 @ 12:49 pm

    The Beast is hungry. It is always hungry.

  2. McGehee
    October 10th, 2014 @ 1:35 pm

    When it has consumed all, it will take hold of its tail and ouroborate.

  3. Finrod Felagund
    October 10th, 2014 @ 1:55 pm

    The acronym SCOAMF is looking more appropriate every day.

  4. Matt_SE
    October 10th, 2014 @ 2:02 pm

    Too many voters have been insulated from the destructive effects up to now. But I have a feeling that’s going to change in the next two years. Things will have to get worse before they get better.

  5. ajpwriter
    October 10th, 2014 @ 2:27 pm

    It’s funny, I just got into a slapfight today wherein I accused someone of circular reasoning so severe that it rendered him a mental ouroboros. Would that I had thought of your anthimeria.

  6. Adobe_Walls
    October 10th, 2014 @ 3:26 pm

    The 2013 FY deficit is supposed to have been a mere $680 billion dollars. Yet we borrowed (issued bonds for) $8,323,949,000,000 because we had to “redeem” $7,546,726,000,000 in maturing bonds for an increase of $777,223,000,000. I don’t know what everyone is worried about. I have no doubt that the rest of the world has the will and the ability to loan us 8 trillion dollars at +/- 2 percent interest every year till the end of time. Further more I am fully confidant that interest rates will never go up. I mean they never have before right?

  7. Rafterman
    October 10th, 2014 @ 3:45 pm

    The imaginary utopia lies just over the next rise.

  8. 10 Best Gwyneth Paltrow Quotes of, Like, Up Until Right Now | Regular Right Guy
    October 10th, 2014 @ 4:39 pm

    […] Obama’s Failed Presidency […]

  9. kilo6
    October 10th, 2014 @ 4:41 pm

    If you really want to see some damned lies about our economy exposed see Shadow Stats analysis of the “recovery” we’re in.
    http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts
    John Williams some excellent work on that site

  10. Obama Says You Can’t Catch Ebola Sitting Next To Someone On A Bus | The Lonely Conservative
    October 10th, 2014 @ 5:24 pm

    […] In related news, the CDC chief is still out there insisting that a travel ban from Ebola afflicted countries is out of the question. Of course he has no facts or science on his side, but hey, what do you expect from this miserable failure of an administration? […]

  11. Political Rift » Obama Says You Can’t Catch Ebola Sitting Next To Someone On A Bus
    October 10th, 2014 @ 5:30 pm

    […] In related news, the CDC chief is still out there insisting that a travel ban from Ebola afflicted countries is out of the question. Of course he has no facts or science on his side, but hey, what do you expect from this miserable failure of an administration? […]

  12. Adobe_Walls
    October 10th, 2014 @ 5:48 pm

    Actually the artificially low interest rate are probably the single greatest monetary/fiscal cause of our pathetic recovery. I would put over regulation at number 2 ahead of any other economic input.
    However the scariest part is that the fed absolutely must maintain this low rate or default must soon follow.

  13. NeoWayland
    October 10th, 2014 @ 6:39 pm

    Behold the Imperious Leader, may truth never touch his lips.

  14. ken_lov
    October 10th, 2014 @ 6:42 pm

    Ah, another “failed presidency”. Out of interest, can anyone nominate the “successful presidencies” of the last 30 years? Because perhaps it’s not the presidents who are at fault, but a political system which tries to make one man responsible for far too much.

  15. Quartermaster
    October 10th, 2014 @ 7:14 pm

    Your last sentence encapsulates much of the problem. The other is the high stakes involved in possession of FedGov. The result in the past has led to tyrants. That’s what happened with Weimar. It led to Hitler.

    If FedGov were still in the cage the founders put it in, these problems would not exist. But thanks to Lincoln, FDR, LBJ, Nixon, Clinton, Both Buses, and now the Joker in the WH, the stakes are simply too high and the left is fighting for control with all they have. Such situations have never ended well, and given human nature, never will.

  16. Adobe_Walls
    October 10th, 2014 @ 8:16 pm

    I’d say that since Wilson or maybe Harding every presidency with the exception of Carter has been mix of successes and failures though rating most of their “achievements” would be in the eye of the beholder. And then of course there’s Obama. Even taking into consideration who will be writing “his history” at least in the near term they’ll tag him a failure. Obamacare certainly won’t age well.

  17. Memento Mori
    October 10th, 2014 @ 9:00 pm

    Good Post RSM. America is swirling down the bowl and will continue to do so unless it can get its left under control. The eventual departure of the boomers will help some but I am not overly optimistic.

  18. DeadMessenger
    October 10th, 2014 @ 9:46 pm

    And what would he mean by making government cool “again”? At the very best case, any government in the history of the world has been like a fiscal colonoscopy, with the baffled and largely stupid populace suffering from a case of collective battered wife syndrome.

    This time around, it’s as if Dr. Mengele performed the colonoscopy…over and over…and the populace is a victim of an Islamic honor killing. Over and over.

    And that sure ain’t cool.

  19. Daniel O'Brien
    October 10th, 2014 @ 10:17 pm

    Traditionally: SCoaMF

  20. Daniel O'Brien
    October 10th, 2014 @ 10:18 pm

    Desert mirage.

  21. Bob Belvedere
    October 11th, 2014 @ 1:17 am

    Most people need to be hit upside the head with a figurative 2×4 before they wake up and smell the Tyranny.

  22. Bob Belvedere
    October 11th, 2014 @ 1:22 am

    But have Barry Soetoro or any of the other members of The Jarrett Junto really failed? Haven’t they – certainly domestically – succeeded in their aims?

    Yes, according to every normal standard, they have failed, but they and their fellow Leftists rejected Normalcy a long time ago.

    To the Left In America, the Revolution is proceeding as they have foreseen.

  23. The Jarrett Junto: Failure Is In The Eyes Of The Beholder | The Camp Of The Saints
    October 11th, 2014 @ 1:37 am

    […] Stephen  Hayes believes that the ‘Obama’ Presidency is an EPIC FAIL [tip of the fedora to Stacy McCain]: […]

  24. Rafterman
    October 11th, 2014 @ 9:22 am

    It really is.

  25. Quartermaster
    October 11th, 2014 @ 12:36 pm

    Since Coolidge, the Presidents between those I list have been part of what Maggie Thatcher called “The Socialist Ratchet.” The GOPe has been telling us for years they will solve the problem, but all they did was set the problems in concrete. Obamacare, in my opinion, is simply the straw that broke the Camel’s back. The entire thing is going to fall. I don’t expect the US to last another 10 years.

    Hope you held onto your Confed money.

  26. Quartermaster
    October 11th, 2014 @ 12:37 pm

    Won’t happen. Both major parties are to the left of center and do all they can to call anyone actually centrist or enter-right, some kind of Nazi extremist.

  27. Robert What?
    October 11th, 2014 @ 5:54 pm

    As a classic narcissist, Obama believed he could alter reality, alter people’s behavior with his sheer wonderfulness. And like a narcissist, once he finds out that the world does not respond the way he demands he tunes out and spends all his time playing golf.

  28. FMJRA 2.0: Trip Like I Do : The Other McCain
    October 11th, 2014 @ 10:45 pm

    […] Obama’s Failed Presidency […]

  29. Paul H. Lemmen
    October 12th, 2014 @ 6:59 am

    Heh. Was helping my mother-in-law unpack at her new place. She showed me Reichmarks she had from her husbands collection: Hundred Million Mark bills. Pretty and in pristine condition. She asked me if they were worth anything and why such high denominations?
    I told her they might buy a loaf of cheap bread …

  30. Quartermaster
    October 12th, 2014 @ 12:46 pm

    Of course, the Confed money quip is simply a humorous throwaway. I knew people that lived through the vast inflation caused by the Weimar Gov’s irresponsibility and the Germans are still scared of seeing that nonsense again. The Fed Reserve, has no such fear. They fear deflation, but they won’t be able to prevent it no matter what they do once it takes hold.