The Left Sees The Light

Great read from our friends on the left.

Barack Obama has now, in just a year's time, become the single most inept president perhaps in all of American history, and certainly in my lifetime. Never has so much political advantage been pissed away so rapidly, and what's more in the context of so much national urgency and crisis. It's astonishing, really, to contemplate how much has been lost in a single year.

We could use a President that is a little better about making decisions, even if they are sometimes wrong or misguided. We need a true decision-maker, not a decision weigher.

But that isn't even the entertaining part of the essay. It is the list of failings. It is refreshing to hear people on the left realizing what many of us were warning about a year ago.

* Even more importantly, if you're trying to run your presidency into the ground you'll definitely want to avoid mobilizing the general public behind your agenda. To make sure that you don't repeat the great legislative victories of FDR or LBJ or (unfortunately) Reagan or (really unfortunately) Little Bush, never use their method of appealing directly to the people. Never express your legislative program as a moral imperative, a great calling to the nation. Never attempt to rally the public behind your cause. Never express any urgency. And never call upon them to demand that Congress pass your bills. Then, you can rest assured they won't!


* Another great trick for crashing a presidency is to pick all the wrong priorities to ‘fight' for. Imagine, for example, if FDR had substituted for his ‘Day of Infamy' speech right after Pearl Harbor a ringing call for an American revolution in cobbler technology! Yes, that's right, in response to the devastating surprise attack by the armed forces of the Empire of Japan, what if the president urgently called upon us all to start making really amazing shoes?! Before it's too late, and we all get blisters on our feet! Similarly, Mr. Obama, your spending the last year on (jive) health care and jetting around the world dipping your toes into foreign policy problems while Americans are losing their jobs and their houses is a fine way to kill your presidency. Guaranteed to work every time.

So you might be smiling and nodding upon reading that. But then here comes the 'solution' the author proposes.

The obvious solution, of course, would be a sharp turn to the left. Go where the real solutions are. Fight the good fight. Call liars ‘liars' and thieves ‘thieves'. Do the people's business. Become their advocate against the monsters bleeding them dry. Create jobs. Build infrastructure. Do real national health care. End the wars. Dramatically slash military spending. Produce actual educational reform. Launch a massive green energy/jobs program. Get serious about global warming. Kick a** on campaign finance reform. Fight for gay rights. Restore the New Deal era regulatory framework and expand it. Restore a fair taxation structure. Rewrite trade agreements that undermine American jobs. Rebuild unions. Fill the spate of vacancies in the federal judiciary, and load those seats up with progressives. Rally the public to demand that Congress act on your agenda. Humiliate the regressives in and out of the GOP for their abysmal sell-out policies.

There seems to be a disconnect.
Call liars ‘liars' and thieves ‘thieves'. What is name calling supposed to produce? Hasn't he already been doing plenty of that anyway? Is this really first on your list of things to do to improve O?

Do the people's business. Become their advocate against the monsters bleeding them dry. These people that you call "monsters" are likely the very people that need to hire workers to get us back to business.

Build infrastructure. Ok... How, when, and where? Isn't there a ton of money in the stimulus bill for building infrastructure but the main problem is finding good places to spend it and getting it through red tape? So is this a plea for Stimulus 2? That should be popular.

Do real national health care. In bizarro world this is an easy proposition. The magical national health care solution that ignores all the problems with taking some idea that works for a country of 30 million and imposing it on a country of 300 million.

End the wars. Dramatically slash military spending. You can end wars immediately by losing them. Or you can try to win them. Is the suggestion that we declare defeat and walk away? That should help the democrats come across as strong on defense.

Produce actual educational reform. Again, how? By throwing more money at the problem? By paying teachers more? I hope not. How about charter schools, which seem to be working so well around the country?

Launch a massive green energy/jobs program. Get serious about global warming. Isn't this what you just criticized him for doing? The whole FDR doing the shoe speech? Global Warming is not the fight we should be fighting today, especially with all the controversy surrounding the basic science behind it. Just this week it came out that the data on the glaciers in the Himalayas was falsified. More fraud coming I'm sure.

Restore a fair taxation structure. Yes, I would like that. One that taxes all people fairly. Please get on that. It is outrageous that people and companies that provide all the jobs in this country are required to pay so much more relative to their income.

Rewrite trade agreements that undermine American jobs. Yes, we need to get all the horse and buggy companies back in business! We also could use support for our typewriter industry. (sarcasm) If you want American companies to have to pay twice the market price of steel while all of our competitors are running laps around us, then rewriting the trade laws in the manner I imagine you want will go to that end.

Rebuild unions. This seems to be working for California, New York, and New Jersey. 3 states with heavy public union populations. By working I mean making them bankrupt.

Rally the public to demand that Congress act on your agenda. Every single thing that congress has pursued in 2009 was top of Obama's agenda. The difference is that they had done some work to understand the issues and framed them to benefit their own constituents. The job of the President is to look after the good of the country, not just the party. Obama doesn't seem to understand that.

Reading the first half of the post I was concerned because it seemed like the author had a good grasp of why Obama is a failure. Reading this last paragraph is refreshing because it tells me that the "Left" still doesn't understand basic economics and how the real world operates. They seem envious of the minority position, they'll be there soon enough.