By John Ransom
5/8/2012
Every week there is a new “controversy” manufactured by the Obama administration in order to avoid answering the tough questions on the only question that really matters.
This week’s manufactured controversy doesn’t even rise to the level of controversy, but still, journalists are anxious to slurp up and then vomit back the gossipy gruel being doled out by the White House.
If the administration manufactures much more news, they’ll have to get a waiver from the EPA under the MACT Act for the noxious and toxic emissions they are producing every week.
On Sunday, vice president Joe Biden suggested that he- and by implication the administration- is OK with gay marriage.
Big deal huh?
I guess maybe the first clue they supported gay marriage would have been when the administration said they weren’t going to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act.
Biden of course implied some sort of misdirection or change of policy by qualifying his statement with the obligatory “of course I’m not speaking for the president” boiler plate that politicians use when they want journalists to follow up with brilliant, edge-of-seat questions like: “But aren’t you taking a position different than the administration!!!”
And yes, journalists really are that dumb.
They need those kinds of hints from their own side, especially with this administration.
I never thought I would live to see an administration with poorer communications skills than George the Younger.
But hey; I was wrong.
Even with a perfectly nuanced and teleprompted delivery, more often than not, Obama gets the message wrong.
He got it wrong on the Keystone pipeline; he got it wrong on GM; he got it wrong on Trayvon Martin; he got it wrong on Sandra Fluke; he got it wrong on Obamacare; he got it wrong on bin Laden and he’ll get it wrong on something else next week too.
Because as wrong as he’s been on those issues, he’s even more wrong on the economy.
Honorable people can agree to disagree on gay marriage, or the facts of Trayvon Martin case, or the Keystone pipeline.
Honorable people can.
But only Obama could screw up the economy as badly as he has and then turn to the dishonorable tactic of running away from his own record by dividing Americans even more.
And Obama’s record is at the nub of the question that is really on voters’ minds.
Has Obama done the job the American people expect him to do?
The answer on that, of course, is no, because voters expect economic results.
As bad as McCain campaigned in 2008, it’s inconceivable that Obama would have won the presidency without one of the biggest assists from the economy in the history of presidential campaigns.
Fair or unfair, that’s how presidential politics works.
Even Obama acknowledged as much when, during the ’08 campaign he admitted that economic failure in his first term would limit him to a “one-term proposition.”
And despite being given unprecedented amounts of money and liquidity, after three-and-half years of Obama, the country is no closer to generating the type of economic activity that will lead to lasting gains in the economy than it was when he took office.
In some respects, in fact, we are much worse off.
That we haven’t fallen victim of the European financial flu -yet- is only because at some point, right after Obamacare was passed, Congress started saying “no” to the president; no to his wacky budgets; no to Cap and Tax; no to green energy pay-offs; no to more bailouts; no to more stimulus.
The administration has issued a record number of regulations and several of the largest legislative “reform” packages in the history of the country- and they don’t even want to talk about any of it.
Because they understand as well as the rest of us that the reform policies they have championed are doing exactly what they are supposed to do: namely, take the greatest economy in the history of the world- one based on a meritocracy- and turn it into a European-style mediocrity.
And for Obama, if the price of doing so is dividing American against each other, those are just the wages of making history.
After all, you have to have a war in order to win a Peace Prize.
Usually the war comes first.
But like with so much regarding this president, he once again has it exactly backward.
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To read another article by John Ransom, click here.
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