The Madness of 2008…A nation became unhinged by trivialities like “hope and change.” It has now awakened.

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Victor Davis Hanson:

America is suddenly angry at the laxity, incompetence, and polarizing politics of the Obama administration, the bad optics of the president putting about in his bright golf clothes while the world burns. Certainly, no recent president has failed on so many fronts — honesty, transparency, truthfulness, the economy, foreign policy, the duties of the commander-in-chief, executive responsibilities, and spiritual leadership.

For those who are “shocked” at the present meltdown, of a magnitude not seen since the annus horribilis of 1979, in their defense: Obama certainly did not campaign on a new health-care plan that would force Americans to give up the doctors they liked and their existing coverage, while raising premiums and deductibles, while giving exemptions for insiders and cronies, and while raising the deficit.

Nor did we hear on the campaign trail that Obama would push gay marriage, open borders, near-permanent zero interest rates, six consecutive $1 trillion deficits, and record food-stamp and Social Security disability payouts. He criticized Bush for relatively minor executive orders, suggesting that he would never rule by fiat — as he since has done in matters of Obamacare, immigration law, and environmental regulations. Remember the promise of ending the revolving door and stopping aides from cashing in — and then follow the post-administration careers of Obama’s closest advisers.

Obama promised to halve the deficit — not run up more red ink than almost all prior presidents combined. Indeed, he once as a senator voted against raising the debt limit and blasted Bush for borrowing from China. He once sermonized to us that the presidency is serious stuff, that it entails inordinate personal sacrifice and even a virtual absence of downtime and vacation — and then he became just the sort of president he was critiquing. But those deceptions were simply politics as usual, and it was logical for the hard leftist Barack Obama to try to appear to be a moderate, given that no Northern liberal had won the presidency in the half-century since John F. Kennedy.

The antidote to the great madness of 2008 would have been, instead of focusing on what Obama claimed or hedged, simply to recall what he had done before he ran for president and to notice what he did during the campaign. Had America done that, there would never have been a President Obama to surprise us now.

The racial animosity characterized by Obama’s editorializing about Skip Gates, Trayvon Martin, and, now, the Ferguson, Mo., hysteria, or his call to Latinos to “punish our enemies,” or the tenure of Eric Holder is simply a continuation of 2008’s “typical white person,” the clingers speech, Michelle Obama’s America as “just downright mean,” “They raise the bar,” and “For the first time . . . I’m really proud of my country” commentaries, and of Obama’s earlier boast that he never missed services at the Trinity Church of the hate-mongering and anti-Semitic Reverend Jeremiah Wright. If Obama had not proved to be a racial divider, we should have been surprised — given what we learned of his past in 2008. After all, it’s from Jeremiah Wright that Barack Obama got the title for his campaign brief, “The Audacity of Hope.”

We are now shocked at the current spate of alphabetic scandals — IRS, AP, NSA, VA. But why are we surprised, given that Obama never told the truth about his relationships with the old terrorist Bill Ayers and former PLO ad hoc spokesman Rashid Khalidi, or about the creepy land deal with the crook Tony Rezko? If the Obama White House demonized the Tea Party as tea-baggers, or compared the Republican House opposition to terrorists and arsonists, why should we be astonished, given how he was elected to the U.S. Senate? Quite mysteriously, his primary opponent, Blair Hull, and his general-election opponent, Jack Ryan, both of whom were favored to win, had their confidential divorce records leaked. Their campaigns subsequently imploded.

Obama has played fast and loose with ethical rules, from promoting crony capitalists to attending near-constant fundraisers among the pay-to-play 0.0001 percent. Again, why should we be surprised, given that he was the first presidential candidate who refused in a general election to accept federal campaign financing, with its accompanying rules curbing mega-fundraising? Obama was the largest recipient of Goldman Sachs donations in the company’s history, and raised more cash in 2008 and 2012 than any other presidential candidate in history.

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Well, not everybody has awakened.

I had read where his dwindling numbers of supporters think being president is too hard for one man…..even with a Cabnet and a bunch of Czars.

[Obama’s] supporters argue that his approach has been consistent with his strategy of returning the United States — after post-Sept. 11 wars — to a foreign policy built around economic engagement rather than military intervention. The question, though, is whether he is contradicting the pledge embraced in his 2009 Nobel Prize lecture: “to face the world as it is,” not as he would like it to be.

“He thought he could change the tenor more easily than he could, and I think he thought the world would be more responsive to his desires than the world has proven to be,” said Jon B. Alterman, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

This explains Obama’s failures as well as anything else:
He speaks his worn out platitudes and thinks his Magic Words can move mountains.

And he has no Plan B for when this fails.

Obama dithers ….. a lot.
He also doesn’t like to do his homework.
He demands memo-like 1/2 sheets of paper with policy decisions distilled down to one sentence and a couple of boxes he can pick from: Yes, No, Maybe Later.

I don’t view Obama’s presidency as a failure. I don’t view hope and change as trivial or unworthy ambitions. Nor do I consider myself to be asleep, or unaware of the problems of the world and the challenges that they pose.

I do believe that Victor Davis Hanson is full of it. He’s living in the alternate reality of the right-wing propagandist, putting the most negative spin possible on everything he mentions. And as usual, he’s saying very little about the specifics of the alternatives that the GOP is pitching. The pig is always kept out of sight in the poke.

God and the Bible warned us about Lucifer.

@FAITH7: AND Greggie!

No, the USA has not awoken.
People are complaining about the same things for which they voted:
Style, appearance, and empty promises.
They are not complaining about substance, about policy decisions.
They are complaining about how his actions look, about how they themselves feel.
The people who are criticizing his actions and decisions are the same ones that have been critical of him all along.
The politics are still about style, not substance, as they have been throughout his presidency.
A nation of sheep. Narcoleptic sheep. Seeing nothing but the small bit of grass directly below their noses.

Awakened? I think not. This country has far too many people/households on one of more forms of public assistance. These parasites did, and will again, vote early and often for the devil as a means of getting their P.A. goodies (i.e. section 8 housing, low or no cost energy, free food, medical care, and school busing, etc, etc, etc). Such parasites have no problem with lying and/or cheating to get what they want via this corrupt, lazy, and unconstitutional “hoke and (diabolical) change” White House squatter.

The same, of course, can be said about our resident liberal trolls.

@Marine72 – lol.

Iraq….Syria….Ukraine….obamacare lies and incompetence…..IRS harassment of conservatives….doubling of the foodstamp rolls…over 75% increase in the national debt under Obama….Benghazi cover-up….labor work force rates dropped to 1970s levels….cutting military to pre-WW II levels….VA scandal…..hordes of illegal aliens coming across the border costing taxpayers more millions of dollars.

Obama is a stuttering clusterfark of a complete failure.

Obama and his regime on the top, endlessly ‘talk’ about the ‘issues’ his low fo base wants to because he knows he can ‘distract’ the sheep, and the low information long enough to implement more disastrous policies – illegal immigration/amnesty for one. This was done without the consent of the American People. Don’t be fooled, there are strong Democrat States and Towns who are pushing back against this – influx – Massachusetts is one and there are others…

There is always things “under the surface” that we are not privy to that ‘surface’ when it is too late to do anything about it. This is sleazy. This is fraud. THIS is not transparency! Leaving our Executive branches out of it is plain tyranny.

Trying to take away states rights is plain tyranny.

Our Government was purposefully set up to move slowly. For Good Reason.

Most recently Obama, contrary to what our Constitution has set forth, by-passed the Senate to reach a ‘Accord’ with the UN on Climate Change – now instead of bringing the rest of the 3rd world here we can now subsidize them from afar…how sleazy of you Mr Obama.
Again, without the Consent of our Legislature OR the American People.

How can one argue this is not tyranny? Not a dictatorship???

Mr Obama wants to “Shame” countries into conforming. How has his ‘track record’ been on ‘Shaming’ ANYTHING that IS WRONG, lawfully or morally within our own Country, recently Russia or any other place on the planet??

Except of course anything Conservatism or Republican and….

Identity politics compartmentalizes people. They stay within their comfort zone and never see the big picture…future impact or the danger.

Awake? Not so sure unless it has a negative impact on their compartment.

@Nanny G:

I had read where his dwindling numbers of supporters think being president is too hard for one man

That has been one of the commies mantras for several decades — need to get their tribunals, politburos, and ‘gangs of eight’ set up —

Meanwhile they have the out – that will be hard to sell – that the most awesome guy ever to come down the pike wasn’t up to the job! – and it was due to the Constitution – that has to be scrapped

@Pete:

Obama is a stuttering clusterfark of a complete failure.

As related to the well being of the country as a whole. As for his and his mentors and current keepers – the internationalist communists and their Islamo shock troops — he has been a resounding success!

@FAITH7:

there are strong Democrat States and Towns who are pushing back against this – influx – Massachusetts is one and there are others…

All Kubuki — they will get showered – flooded actually with enough fed bucks to shut up — and a large percent of that will flow back into the demo-commie-cRAT pottie coffers! Meanwhile the illegals will quietly be shuffled around – establishing residences in more than one voting district and well documented up with voter registrations and fake driver’s licenses — no insurance of course.

Maybe the damn demo-commie-cRATs will have to take over the auto insurance business since the costs of uninsured motorists will be skyrocketing!

@Nanny G:

Riddle me this Obama sycophants:

If “being president is too hard for one man,” than isn’t this expounded upon exponentially when this same one person tries to steal Constitutionally separated powers away from other branches of government made up of many persons? Doesn’t this also prove the utter hypocrisy of his supporters premise that this “Won” man “knows better” than the collected minds of many who create the laws, and argue against his picking and choosing what laws he will enforce and what he will not? If it is “too much for one man” how can you then justify cheering on his unilaterally ruling as if he were king via executive fiat, and bypassing the rest of government? If it is too much for him, than why do you encourage his administration’s political micro-management of agencies, using them to expand his tentacles of reach into more aspects of our lives and as his own political strong-arm thugs to attack the many who oppose the political aspirations of this “Won”.

If the Presidency is “too much for one man,” why do you encourage him to rule as a tyrant?