Barack Obama is simply the latest offering in that make believe world of a two party system. Obama is charismatic, somewhat charming, and an excellent orator. He is narcissistic, an unrelenting self promoter, and he lacks experience. What many find troubling is that Obama is expanding government at a frentic pace and he may lack personal courage. Characterizations and judgements require evidence. Robert Kennedy told us to rely on what a candidate has accomplished and discount heavily anything offered in the form of speech. So we will rely on what has happened and not happened thus far and try to sift through it all. That seems like a logical thing to do.
Prior to the election, President Obama's history was a bit of a mystery. His mother, characterized as young and a free spirit, became pregnant at an early age. Whether Obama was born here (Hawaii) or Kenya is still puzzling. He was schooled under another name, Barry Soetoro, in Indonesia and took classes in the Muslim faith. He did not spend many of his young and formative years as a U.S. citizen. He attended our very best universities including Harvard, worked at various jobs and he taught for 12 years, and then he began his meteoric rise through politics via the state of Illinois. Where did he acquire the means and support to do all of that? Much of Obama's past, prior to his arrival in college, is simply a mystery. We can't rely heavily on it. When given an alternative, one that required a choice between loyalty or self interests, President Obama chose the latter.
During the campaign, Obama distanced himself from his friend, Reverend Wright. It doesn't matter whether Wright said outrageous things or not. What matters is courage. Standing by your friends and convictions at your own peril requires courage. Some of us noticed.
Nominating Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State was done to show goodwill and disarm her potential criticism as part of the administration. Her selection was clever, cagey, but unfortunately a poor choice. If we examine what Hillary has done, we find a woman involved in suspicious acts like trading cattle futures that yielded her a fortune despite her absolute lack of knowledge, she with held Vince Foster's documents after his apparent suicide, her unwavering silence during the Lewinsky scandal, and her carpetbagging New York State as a Senator. In addition, Ms. Clinton charges U.S. taxpayers a vast sum of rent money for housing Secret Service at their New York home as though the Clintons' haven't made enough money already. Ms. Clinton is a text book elitist. Had Kennedy's logic been applied to her nomination as Secretary of State, it is doubtful we would see her selling bonds to the Chinese.
Obama had an opportunity to stop bailing out banks with taxpayer money and simply put banks in receivership as was done during the 1980's Savings and Loan Crisis. Instead, he continued the same methodology as his predecessors. Inheriting the influence of bankers like Paulson and Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Chris Dodd, Obama acted as though there was no other alternative. Selecting Timothy Geithner, the New York Fed Reserve Governor and tax cheat for Treasury Secretary smacked of business as usual. Obama increased bail outs and stimulus packages in vast amounts-plunging our country into a hole that may take decades to emerge from.
Obama called for the head of GM CEO Rick Wagoner and took it. This was an act of cowardice. Wagoner spent his entire life at GM. General Motors was experiencing problems obtaining financing as a company and for it's customers just as every other auto maker was. Wagoner was not responsible for that problem. A greedy and out of control banking system was unwinding. Congress had repealed the Glass Steagal Act that enabled this disaster. Those things had nothing to do with Rick Wagoner. But Obama, in a political sacrifice to make Americans happy and make himself look good, took responsibility for the dismissal. It was a cowardly act that unfairly spun Wagoner as an incapable leader.
Obama did manage to shut down Guantanomo Bay and release top secret memos as he foreshadowed in a speech about government transparency. He is now talking about universal health care. This issue may ultimately define his Presidency.
Barack Obama has done very little thus far in terms of demonstrating personal courage. Faced with doing what is right and what is politically expedient, he has chosen the latter. In terms of enriching himself with wealth or power, there has been very little evidence that separates him from the self seeking power brokers that already exist on Capitol Hill. Obama is expanding government by taking control of businesses and essentially buying them. At a time when we desperately need change in the form of smaller and less wasteful government, Obama is enlarging government. Personal courage defines a man and separates him. We are only 100 days into this Presidency and while there is still time for him to "change", positive change is apparently in short supply. President Obama's heart may have been in the right place on the campaign trail, but now he expands the role of government which always has the counter effect of diminishing freedom. Given the option of hacking down and reducing the size of government at great personal peril was apparently not the type of change he was referring to. Obama's brand of change thus far has been to spend and tax our economy into oblivion and bring us one step closer to a socialist state. If in fact, we aren't one already.