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3/31/2009
Burri: Obama's compass is... GW?
One wonders what, exactly, President Obama’s guiding principles are. On the one hand, he’s living the liberal dream. The spending spigot is wide open. The tap is running full blast. He’s raising taxes; working on nationalized health care; effectively nationalizing major industries and looking to do even more. Liberal true believers are staring, slack-jawed, drool running down their chins. It’s everything they’ve ever wanted. Everything they’ve dreamed.
Except…waitaminute: is he going to close Gitmo, or not? Is he going to get us out of Iraq? He says so, but…he’s sending more troops to Afghanistan! His administration has backtracked on rendition, and even on “aggressive interrogations” by our own people.
And, most recently:
Civil liberties advocates are accusing the Obama administration of forsaking campaign rhetoric and adopting the same expansive arguments that his predecessor used to cloak some of the most sensitive intelligence-gathering programs of the Bush White House.
…It is the second time the new Justice Department has followed its predecessors in claiming the state-secrets privilege, which would allow the government to exclude evidence in a civil case on grounds that it jeopardizes national security. What was it they said about Bush? He was burning the Constitution?
Uber liberal in some ways; uber-conservative – Dubya’s critics would say fascist – in others. Obama is both the liberal Second Coming, and following in Bush’s footsteps. So inspiring, and so incredibly disappointing.
That's the Obama administration so far: George W. Bush, only moreso.
Let’s remember, Obama’s political career only goes back to 1996. Before that, he was a community organizer, paying attention to politics, almost certainly, but not absorbing the lessons. Not in the context he needs today.
For example: the lessons of 1993. He hasn't absorbed the failure of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s first two years in office. HillaryCare; gays in the military; the middle-class tax cut that wasn’t.
The Clintons overreached. Didn’t pay enough attention to the people pulling those election-day levers. They tried to shove too much down the taxpaying public’s throats all at once, and got their butts kicked for it the very next year.
Obama knows that, but he doesn’t know it. He remembers 1993 and 1994, but he doesn't grok it. He never internalized it. There’s a difference between knowing something, and understanding it. Being able to apply it.
By the time Obama hit the national scene, President Bush was in his second term. And now he's the President. He has to figure out what to do. Where to stand. A direction. And his only reference – the entirety of his professional context – is George W. Bush.
Bush is a Republican. A conservative, at least compared to Obama's native surroundings. So he takes his cues from there.
President Bush spent lots and lots and lots of money. Republicans are the small-government, fiscally conservative party. Thus, President Obama spends even more.
President Bush expanded the role of government in people’s lives. That must be the "rugged individualism" Republicans like to talk about. Thus, President Obama figures, a Democrat would expand government even more.
President Bush tried to expand government powers. Republicans distrust a powerful government, so President Obama assumes he should expand those powers even further.
Republicans want the government to stay out of private enterprise, but President Bush spent hundreds of millions propping up failing companies. Thus, President Obama spends hundreds of billions, and then takes those companies over.
Surge!
It’s not that President Obama has no compass. He does: George W. Bush. Liberals thought they were finally rid of him. Nope. They're living with his legacy.
Lance Burri is a contributor to the Badger Blog Alliance and The TrogloPundit.
COMMENTS
And how about this? GW invited Muslims to the White House, telling us all how "peaceful" they are. SOME ARE, but they are the ones who don't read the Koran much. And Keith Ellison took his oath of office on the Koran.
Ellison made his trip to Mecca already; something a lot of Muslims never get to do. His trip was sponsored by the Muslim American Society, part of the Muslim Brotherhood, which explained its work in America as "a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions."
Obama is aggressively seeking more Muslims to work in the White House; 300 resumes have already been submitted.
emily matthews (Tue Mar 31 08:29:55 2009)
Can't wait to see what he does when we get hit. Not if ... when. Will he sit down with the aggressors over a cup of General Foods International Coffee and share his feelings? Or will he be a leader and communicate with them at the only level they truly understand.
We got the leader we deserve - he's the one we elected (I know, we didn't ALL vote for him, but by the system in place WE elected him.)
The best we can hope for now is that the US isn't messed up too badly during the duration of his term and that this generation will learn from the experience much like the last generation learned from the Carter presidency.
Jeff Riedl (Tue Mar 31 09:41:50 2009)
I take strong issue with the comment that Bush was a Conservative... More media hype and BS.
He was labeled that by the Media and the Bush Campaign as they wanted the public to believe that.
Bush is a Rockefeller Republican (RR)
The only thing He had was a religious conviction similar to the Episcopalians on abortion.
He ran up debt, fell in bed with Kennedy on Schools, and brought out the biggest Social Security program (Drugs)since Roosevelt.
He never protected our boarders and wanted Amnesty for illegals.
He was NOT a Conservative.
He was a RR with a southern accent.
I blame Karl Rove for this travesty
Rich (Tue Mar 31 22:30:03 2009)
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