Ed Lasky
American Thinker
11/15/2011
Calling America “lazy” last weekend was only the latest and broadest insult from President Obama. America has become accustomed to Obama’s lashing out at entire groups of people. What has been all too little appreciated is his seeming delight in bullying, if not demeaning, individuals face-to-face. He is protected from angry responses not just by the Secret Service, but by the reverence his victims have for the office he holds.
This is a level of respect for the institution of the presidency that Obama does not share or hold dear. For him, the bully pulpit has taken an entirely different — and disgraceful — meaning from the one given to it by Teddy Roosevelt. What does it say about Barack Obama that he indulges in personal insults? What does this mean for America?…
…Partisan and non-partisan, high and low, domestic and international — Obama feels entitled to insult a broad swath of people. He has taken the trash-talking appropriate for the basketball court — if not a schoolyard playground — and brought it into the public arena.
Why?
Presidents are supposed to be above insults. They have a stable of attack dogs to deliver the partisan attacks. Nixon had his Agnew, for example. There is a surfeit of people Obama can rely upon to smear Republicans. Joe Biden is too congenial to be the messenger, but certainly Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid can assume these roles, as can DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, who happily attacks Republicans when given the microphone. But despite claims that he outsources the “dirty work” to others, this seems to be the one type of “work” that Obama enjoys doing himself.
Many might be tempted to say that this reflects Obama’s outsized ego. He has been coddled, and his path to success to a great extent paved, by others who mentored him. But perhaps there is another dynamic at work. Obama’s political career was made in the Democratic stronghold of Cook County. He never had to cut deals across the aisle. Any success he had when he served in Springfield was due to bill-jacking; the hard work across the aisle was done by others, but Obama’s political mentor, State Senate President Emil Jones, schemed to have Obama’s name attached to the bills so he could make a United States senator out of his protégé. Obama never learned to deal with Republicans, and so he takes personal umbrage when he has to exert himself to work with them (see also my earlier article on Obama’s work ethic). Compromise is not in his nature — nor, apparently, are manners.
In short, Obama personalizes policy disputes and thereby puts himself, and his ego, before the needs of the nation.
Read the entire article at American Thinker.
Related: Does America Deserve Obama?
President Obama is a socialist and a vapid demagogue who has been educated beyond the level of his intelligence. He is the choice of a puerile and spoiled electorate who want to be taken care of and obtain handouts from a parental figurehead.
I can’t believe the West won the Cold War. The Cold War was a competition of economic ideologies. In the 1960s, we used to have sincere debates about which economic system was better — a socialist, centrally-planned economy, or a capitalist, free-market economy. The debate is over. By 1990, even the Russians and Chinese were forced to implicitly admit the superiority of market economies. But while our former enemies were busy converting their socialist systems to market economies, we were happily rushing headlong into socialism…
