By Allan Erickson
Cartoon by Martin Rowson in The Guardian
It is truly astonishing to watch the cataclysmic implosion of the Obama administration.
No one had ever been ushered into the White House with such pomp and enthusiasm. No one had spent so many hundreds of millions of dollars to convince people to vote. No one had garnered such global adoration. And no one had assumed the office with less experience.
Yet here we are, only 10 months into the odyssey, and Obama's presidency is viewed a failure. Approval ratings have fallen dramatically. Disapproval ratings increase. Youth are alienated. Unemployment ranks swell. Military morale plummets. Racial strife is heightened. The recession deepens. For all the talk of change, hope is gone.
Regardless of political orientation people sense we've elected a thoroughly unqualified bumbler without a lick of financial or military sense, a man who has assembled a mob of fringe lunatics driven by radicalism, a pie-in-the-sky radicalism completely out of place in a world demanding common sense and hyper pragmatism.
With each passing week people come to understand the mob in Washington is out to fundamentally change the country founded by Christian intellectuals who created the most liberty and prosperity ever available to humankind. People see the pervasive changes imagined by the mob are antithetical to our traditions, our principles and our very well-being. And people see that the mob must be run out of town before it is too late.
Still the mob marches on led by a man seemingly oblivious to the consequences of his serial missteps.
And now the howlers have turned their ire from Bush to Obama. Murderer turned radic educator Bill Ayers sobbed weeks back he feared the brilliant one would be consumed by foreign wars. Senator Leahy has apparently attacked Obama for his policy on land mines. Far left Dems, the majority it appears, condemn the President for his lackluster performance on healthcare reform, gay rights, and environmental issues. The media, once a part of the mob, issuing one adoring proclamation after another, is now increasingly critical. Even Couric is ready to ride the bandwagon playing the derision dirge. Michael Moore has issued a edict, proclaiming an Obama surge in Afghanistan will mean the end of the dream, leaving an army of youth disillusioned and dismayed.
Add to the malaise Obama's crazed AG bringing terrorists for trial in New York just blocks from where the Twin Towers once stood, and the idiotic insistence we go thoroughly broke behind government takeover of healthcare, not to mention cap and trade psychosis, and you have a mob so run amok it now appears clownish, the ring master deranged.
More than a year ago, long before the election, this writer, along with many others, predicted Obama would fail within two years for simple reasons: he would try to govern a center right country from the far left and would thus alienate the majority; he would also try to appease the middle in many ways, alienating the far left; given his lack of experience and core values, all the ensuing chaos would force him into survival mode which only aggravates chaos; given his weakness in foreign policy he would project that weakness thus encouraging our enemies; and saving the worst for last, his economic policies would drive a serious recession into depression.
Until recently Obama supporters have stood silent, watching implosion, the self-demolition, with a sense of having been betrayed and manipulated. Now, they are speaking out. From the folks at Salon and Daily Kos, to the writers on SNL, to Paglia and even Olbermann, Obama's critics are lining up and taking shots almost without restraint. They see little difference between Obama and Bush when it comes to the war on terror and national security issues, and say so, with a vengeance. Long gone are the days Obama could dump on Bush, and everyone except Obama appears to understand that reality.
We all wish we could say good things about our President. We all wish we could have a sense of enthusiasm. We all wish for better days and a returning sense of national pride, optimism and productivity.
However, growing numbers of us realize these good outcomes will only materialize when we return to traditional Americanism as articulated by the Founders and by people like Ronald Reagan, Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, and Abraham Lincoln.