Obama's Time-Limited, Scope-Limited, Kinetic Presidency

Obama's Time-Limited, Scope-Limited, Kinetic Presidency
By John Ransom
4/15/2011

I don’t know that Obama will be a one-term president.

But the glamour days are done for him. His scholarship has about run out.

On that, even people on the left are starting to agree.

We can no longer afford to treat the presidency as if it were a reality show starring Barack Obama as the chief contestant.

In order to turn the country around, we have to elevate the presidency above the level of American Idol, and turn it back into the American ideal.

It’s apparent every time the “president” makes a “big” speech, that he’s not up to the moment, that Obama can’t do the job the presidency demands.

He’s a man of limitations. For all his seeming worldliness, his experiences have limited the scope of his vision, instead of broadening it.

He has become the kinetic president, famous for only the sound his movement creates.

Sure, there was a short romance, when some in the country were in love with the speeches and yearned for Camelot. But speeches aren’t a destination. More often than not, the sound of his voice has been a distraction; or too often an outright distortion.

Eventually, even Barack Obama’s life has to get judged on results.

In foreign affairs, he recently invested most of his political capital in Libya, the most ramshackle real estate in the Islamic world. As a result, the NATO alliance has entered a period of division verging on dissolution as a credible force.

Far from being cowed by the show of American and allied force, Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi is riding around in an open SUV in Tripoli taunting the alliance. Gaddafi looks like he is enjoying himself immensely. The best outcome we can hope for in Libya is that we stop looking and acting foolish soon.

And in case no one has noticed, Obama’s secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has said “thanks, but no thanks” to a second tour of duty as foreign minister. The gossip line has it that Clinton is fed up with the weak-willed Obama, his disorganized administration and the irresolution of the cabinet.

On the campaign trail, Obama came about as close as one can come to saying “Read my lips: No new wars.”

By breaking that pledge, and about a dozen others, the progressives will never trust him again.

Why should they trust Obama again? They found out one of the bitterest lessons to learn in politics: If he will lie to me, he will lie to thee.

It will take more than just some “soak the rich” rhetoric to heal the wound he’s created on the left.

This is not 1995 and he’s no Bill Clinton.

On the domestic front, his one card trick, printing money by the ream, is coming to an end. The bankers from Goldman Sachs, et al who so heavily invested in his campaign, have told him no more debt.

The administration had hoped that they could buy an economic recovery, like the Yankees buy World Series appearances. But Obama’s found out what the rest of knew already: If you’re not the Yankees, you can’t buy what you have to earn the hard way.

Does it really surprise anyone that that’s a lesson he wouldn’t get?

In a way, Obama’s been a perpetual student, on perpetual scholarship all his life. As long as he was voting present, he got credit for passing the course.

But you can’t audit the presidency. It’s a pass/fail class.

Obama is an epic fail and his financial aid should be revoked.
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To read another article by John Ransom, click here.