Why Obama Will Fail

To me it seems inevitable that Obama’s tenure as President will be seen as a failure. There’s still some chance that he’ll be reelected in 2012, but, should that come to pass, it will be more due to a possible lack of viable GOP candidate than any great support for President Obama.

Frankly I think that just about anyone who got elected as POTUS in 2008 was going to end up being seen as a failure. America has troubles for which there are no perfect or pain-free solutions.

What’s both somewhat odd and also very scary for America’s future is that it is not the Right, the Conservatives, who will ensure that President Obama is considered a failure; it’s the Left, the Liberals and the “Progressives” that will ensure such fate comes to pass.

I’ve noticed this trend, but this one singular post by a random blogger, july7nyc, in response to this screed at HuffPo summed up the situation perfectly and eloquently.

I admit, I got caught up in the hype. I believed, hoped. And I voted. He’s a great speaker- I’ll give him that. I expected Obama to come in blazing- even Bush didn’t seem to have a problem getting his agenda passed.

I never anticipated the resistance from other Democrats! His lack of leadership on health care has infuriated me. Why he didn’t meet with all the Dems and pointedly say, “Look, here is what we’re going to do with health care. You are going to back it up and vote for it and we are going to pass it and if you have a problem, you suck it up because you were elected to represent the people and the people want health care reform. If you give me a problem, I will make your life very difficult, but if we do this, you will reap the benefits.”

There should not have been this lengthy, drawn-out time for “debate” and town halls and letting the Republicans lie and mislead and sour positive reform. The fact that even if this pathetic excuse for a health care bill passes, it is so watered down and worthless, it can only make things worse, further demonstrates what can happen when you allow the very industry you’re trying to reform, have center stage.

I am changing to Independent and I don’t even know what that fully means, but I do know I cannot align myself with a party of failures any longer.

It seems that many – july7nyc was just the one whose post resonated the most –  on the Left feel the same way as President Obama’s Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Relations and Public Liaison, Valerie Jarrett, made it clear how she felt when Obama was first elected President.

However, given the daunting challenges that we face, it’s important that president elect Obama is prepared to really take power and begin to rule day one.

— Valerie Jarrett
November 9th Meet The Press Interview

“Take power and rule” seems to be what many Liberals wanted Obama to do. Despite their very vocal and strident hatred of President Bush’s supposedly autocratic manner and his “Imperial Presidency,” the Liberals sound like they both wanted and expected President Obama to behave in exactly the same manner – only with an agenda that the Left favored.

The Left wanted and expected President Obama to truly lead his Liberals in Congress to enact a punitive regime and ram the Liberal agenda down America’s throats, irrespective of the fact that it is not the POTUS’ place to lead Congress. Bipartisanship, except possibly President Obama’s “interestingly” realpolitik definition of it, was not to be tolerated.

But President Obama is failing them. For good or ill his preference for rhetoric over action and the softer forms of coercion over direct exercise of power is as prevalent in his domestic policy as it is in his foreign policy. Obama is just unwilling to be the leader that the Liberals wanted and thought that they were getting.

More and more I’m sure that they will make him pay heavily and painfully for his great sin of disappointing them. That, more than anything from the Right, is why Obama will fail.

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13 Responses to “Why Obama Will Fail”

  1. july7nyc Says:

    You really made a good point and one which I had not heard before- at least in such reasonable and straight-forward terms. Maybe I have been wrong to expect what I did, but what is the alternative? Leaving things to senators and congress boils down to who gets paid to vote which way. Granted, I do not understand many things about how things work in terms of finances and incentives in politics, but I do know politicians seem to have absolutely no qualms about fighting for interests that benefit THEMSELVES personally, as opposed to the people they are supposed to represent. Maybe I came into politics too naive… OK, I definitely did, but I still would think the general public would be more outraged on a regular basis at the corruption and self-serving that goes on- blatantly- as if it’s “just part of the game.”

    I’m still trying to sort things out- which is an extremely time-consuming, frustrating endeavor (just to get the facts, in most cases), but I do feel betrayed by Obama. If that will last or if I am able to rationalize it out, I don’t yet know. But I do know I still have a lot to learn…

  2. jonolan Says:

    july7nyc,

    What is amazing – to me at least – is that your complaints about Congress almost exactly mirror those of the Tea Party Protesters.

    That shouldn’t worry you nearly so much as it should worry the “Congress Critters” since it seems that both the Left and the Right feel that Congress is failing to represent their constituency.

  3. July7nyc Says:

    I have yet to hear anything logical come out of a tea bagger- and I am not meaning that to be inflammatory- I mean it literally. I have never heard them talk about their congressmen or senators- I’ve only heard rants about “taking the country back” and how Obama is a “socialist, nazi, show-us-the-birth-certificate, Muslim, Antichrist.” While I may disagree with those who oppose health care reform or gay marriage, if they can back up and articulate a fact-based, rational argument for their opinion, I have complete and utter respect for them. I don’t believe ALL republicans are lunatics, but ones who seem to representing the party as a whole are pretty certifiable. I mean, the media is in no way to blame for Sarah Palin’s image- she does a great job of making herself look as dumb as a rock. It’s people like her that I have little tolerance for because they ruin opportunities for true, progressive, helpful debate and dialogue by getting people riled up on twisting facts, patriotism, and outright lies. Furthermore, when politicians do this, it is absolutely reprehensible. How can it not be criminal to propagate complete lies to the public? I know, I know- they lie all the time, but what I mean is how can they not be called out when they lie about what is contained in various bills/legislation?
    It’s true that both sides seem to be extremely angry, but I believe it’s for completely different reasons. And while I started out 100% un-partisan, it didn’t take me long to see which party I felt most closely embodied my values and opinions. It comes down to which party is the most hypocritical, and hands down- Republicans can take that award.

  4. jonolan Says:

    Of course you haven’t heard anything you’d respect from the Tea Partiers; the media hasn’t exactly published anything about them that was less than derogatory and you’re unlikely to have attended a protest.

    As for Palin – she resonates with a huge number of Americans, myself included. Largely this is because the “elites” with their vaunted educations haven’t been serving the needs of we, the People in quite a while. For some of us a track record of actual political reform and basic common sense values count for more than a degree or two.

    Is Palin a viable political candidate? You betcha! 😉 Would she be bad for America? No worse than Obama if she has GOP Congress and less so if she has a Dem one.

    As for lies – If you support Obama at all, you’d best talk softly about lies,half-truths, misdirections, and the twisting of facts. He’s the past master of those rhetorical feats – otherwise you wouldn’t be in your current quandary.

    As for hypocrisy – I’d say the two parties are tied on that score. Again, if they weren’t you wouldn’t be in your current quandary.

  5. Arius Says:

    In brief, since the start of the industrialized revolution, the 18th century saw the rise of the economy stronghold, the hegemony of financial domination by a few–starting with the Mayer Amschel Bauer I believe–later turned Rothschild.

    Between the IMF and the WB, these selected and elite individuals control the financial destiny of this country and the world as well. Let’s not forget these international robber barons who backed both sides of the WWI.

    My point is this: no matter whose elected, the economic destiny of this country is pre-designed to be ruled by the oligarchy–this surpasses the government that we see in the public (Democrats, Republican, Independent, etc…)–the puppets of passivisity.

  6. Dirk Says:

    Arius, can I have a hit of whatever you’re having? Wow!

  7. BookGuy Says:

    I would suggest that talks of failure wait a bit. This premature talk of failure and the 2012 elections is a little silly. I put forth the suggestion that by the time 2012 comes along, the fight will be over things we aren’t even talking about now.

    Do the Dems seem to spend more time shooting themselves than the Republicans? Yeah. And that’ll be their downfall. But let’s not jump to final conclusions before the end of the first year.

  8. jonolan Says:

    Maybe, maybe not, BookGuy. Obama has both the lowest approval rating for this point in his term of any POTUS since WW2 and had the sharpest drop in popularity.

    All that aside though, it’s the Liberals’ growing complaints that I believe will be his downfall insofar as his legacy and memory are concerned. Somehow I just don’t think Obama is going to “find himself on the right side of history.”

  9. BookGuy Says:

    That’s the funny thing about history, it’s not written till afterwards. And Obama’s less than a year into it. Between now and historians writing about him there are thousand Ifs.
    If the Healthcare Reform is passed, he’ll look visionary
    If the Healthcare Reform doesn’t, he’ll look incompetent
    If the Economy starts cruising, he’ll be seen as saving our Economy from Republicans
    If the Economy double dips, he’ll be seen as an example of how Keynesian economics has failed
    If he captures Osama bin Laden, he’s the hero that did what Bush couldn’t
    If we’re hit again bad, and things look like he was soft, no Democrat will get elected for a decade.

  10. Ryan Mason Says:

    It seems that to right the ship, the pendulum tried to swing all the way to the left before it could rebalance back to somewhere near the middle where it usually rests, but instead, Obama just stopped right in the middle before it could finish the swing. This left the angry, bitter liberals still angry and bitter for having had to deal with Bush for eight years and not being able to do the same to the Republicans with a total Democratic control for the first time in well over a decade.

    The thing about Obama is that he’s actually being a President. He’s definitely directing the policies that come out of Congress, but he’s still letting the legislature do the ugly business that they are supposed to do: legislate. And as we’re seeing now with the health care bill, it’s ugly as sin. What will the final product look like? Remains to be seen. Will it please everyone? Certainly not. Is that a good thing? It very well might be. In the same way that history only makes sense after it’s written, not during, we can only speculate that the bill will be good or that it will make things worse than we have it now (I don’t see that happening, though). Anyone who expected it to be perfect in the first place doesn’t know anything about politics or just lives in a dreamworld. And anyone who voted for Obama expecting him to be the liberal Bush (that is, a liberal Decider) clearly wasn’t listening to Obama during the campaign and was one of those people that the Right love to make fun of: those who thought of Obama as the savior – you know, the lady that they always showed saying that she won’t have to worry about anything anymore.

    Regardless, Jonolan, you do have a point about the Democrats being the reason that he might not get reelected, but I also agree with BookGuy that it’s far too early to be denouncing his presidency as a failure less than a year in. His approval rating amongst Republicans was never high so of course his drop had to come from Democrats. And the Democratic Party has shown that it’s not so liberal as some thought it to be. But then again, Obama is far from the bleeding-heart liberal that the Right paints him to be, too.

  11. Isiah Ballmann Says:

    It has been crystal clear for a long time that Obama has a core set of beliefs that he religiously (no pun intended) sticks to. The issue here is, he doesn’t seem to realize that his ideas have destroyed everything they have touched time and time again throughout history. It’s okay… if we survive until next year, the hard road to Reconstruction -I use that word on purpose- can begin.

  12. jonolan Says:

    Welcome, Mr. Ballman.

    I used to think as you do but now I’m less convinced that Obama’s core beliefs extend beyond himself and the “legacy” that he will leave. He’s much more the childish narcissist than the Leftist Messiah.

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