I was listening to Barack Obama after the shooting down of MH17. It was just another pretty speech.
Barack Obama’s place in history is assured.
He will be remembered as the first black President of the US.
The history books may have little more positive to say than that. They may mention that he did win a second term. They may well wonder why? They may mention his dithering and some of his pretty speeches. They may have many more negative things to remember. Of being a US President who despite a Democratic majority in the Senate managed to accomplish very little. In both international affairs and on the domestic front some of his failures could be catastrophic enough to earn a place in the history books.
Iraq and Syria are overrun with terrorists. Violence is flaring in Ukraine and on Israel’s borders. A humanitarian crisis is developing on our own southern border, but immigration legislation, like most all legislation, is moribund. Probes of the veterans’ health-care system, the IRS and Benghazi are sucking up attention and the administration’s time.
Now fully one third of the US thinks Obama was/has been the worst US President since the Second World War! Worse than Jimmy Carter, worse than George Bush Jr., even worse than Richard Nixon., and I can remember the loathing that Tricky Dicky engendered – both in the US and internationally.
Obama’s reputation internationally is one of pretty speeches and no substance, of a President who is so risk averse that he is virtually paralysed in any situation demanding courage and of a President who has abdicated control over his security services. The NSA spying revelations, the expulsion of the CIA head in Germany and the failure of intelligence in Libya and Syria and Ukraine, despite unprecedented levels of information gathering, give the impression of a security service completely devoid of oversight or direction. Obama’s security apparatus is going rogue but he has not the wherewithal to control or direct it.
Even domestically his healthcare flagship is less than convincing. He may have bigger failures to come both internationally and domestically, but there is little expectation of any future successes. His over-analysis and dithering on virtually every issue suggests he could possibly have been of some use in a think-tank advising a President. But they are characteristics which have not served him well as President.
But Obamacare’s “free” benefit mandates, and overregulation, has only resulted in sharply increasing health insurance costs, more than doubling premiums in many cases, another President Obama failure by his own words and standards.
But the worst President Obama failure can still be yet to come. Obama told us that nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran’s terrorist government would be “unacceptable” and he would stop it by any means necessary, with all options now on the table. But the flower child Obama/Kerry nuclear negotiations now actually seem resigned to only trying to contain what Reagan defense expert Frank Gaffney now is calling the Iranian “Obamabomb,” to echo the Obamacare failure.
His pretty speeches have fooled a lot of people and have built up hopes and expectations. But it is not just that hopes and expectations will have been dashed. He will leave the world a more turbulent and dangerous place when he leaves the presidency than when he started. Eight wasted years.
Tags: Barack Obama
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