<http://thefederalist.com/2014/09/16/10-ways-obama-has-failed-as-president/> 10 Ways Obama Has Failed as President
We are so over with being impressed by this president. By <http://thefederalist.com/author/rtracinski/> Robert Tracinski A poll released last week had some pretty <http://www.washingtonpost.com/page/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/09/09/Nati onal-Politics/Polling/release_361.xml> bad news for congressional Democrats heading into the midterm elections. But buried in the poll numbers was a figure that just might constitute an even more important turning point. Respondents were asked: On balance, do you feel that Obamas presidency so far has been more of a success or more of a failure? More than half, 52%, said failure. Only 42% said success. And it gets worse. Only 22% were strongly convinced Obama is a success, while 39% are strongly convinced hes a failure. And the American people have pretty much made up their minds on this; only 6% of respondents had no clear opinion. Other evidence backs up this turn in public opinion. How bad has it gotten? The last president who was widely written off by the American people as a failure, George W. Bush, now enjoys <http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/09/10/its-here-the-day-democrats-never-t hought-would-come/> higher net approval ratings than Obama, while Mitt Romney has been going on an <http://neoneocon.com/2014/09/09/what-is-romney-up-to/> I-told-you-so tour. At this point, the American people are pretty much feeling like <http://nypost.com/2014/09/09/kid-face-plants-at-the-white-house/> this kid. We are so over with being impressed by this president. On behalf of long-time critics of Obama, let me say to the American people: welcome to our world. As a public service, to help you solidify your sense that he just isnt up to the job, let me count down the ways that President Obama has failed to live up to his promises and to the responsibilities of his office. The list is pretty comprehensive. 1. He didnt heal our racial divisions. The first thing people expected of Obama, the whole reason his presidency was already hailed as historic on Inauguration Day 2009, before he had taken a single official act, is because voters thought that the first black president would help America put the ugly history of racially divisive politics behind us. But from his earliest stumbling effortsanyone remember the <http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/barackobama/tp/barack-obama-gaffes.htm> Beer Summit?Obama has proven alternately uninterested and ham-handed in dealing with this signature issue. What he has mostly contributed has been to rush in and pre-judge racially charged cases, like the shooting of Trayvon Martin or the questionable police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, before the defendants get their day in court. When you pre-judge someone on the basis of race, isnt there a word for that? So as the recent race riots in Ferguson confirm, Obama has not served as some kind of magical bridge who would promote mutual understanding between whites and blacks. Instead, he has done more to inflame the tensions in these cases than to defuse them. Our expectations of Obama were overblown from the beginning, but he worked pretty hard to overblow them. Certainly, when voters chose him, they were hoping for the opposite of an unscrupulous race-hustler like Al Sharpton. There was even a <http://www.metatube.com/en/videos/10922/SNL-The-Obama-Files-from-TV-Funhous e/> joke about Obama sending Sharpton and Jesse Jackson on missions to non-existent countries just to get them as far away from his campaign as possible. Now, Sharpton is being described as Obamas go-to man on race, with a White House source <http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/08/al-sharpton-obama-race-11024 9.html#.VBZ7jOeLkeM> gushing to The Politico that Theres a trust factor with The Rev from the Oval Office on down. For those of us who remember Obamas previous go-to man on that subjectthe <http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/04/obamas_chickens_come_home _to_r.html> Reverend Jeremiah Wrightits not surprising. But its not what most people thought they were voting for. 2. The stimulus didnt stimulate. President Obama was elected in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, and his first big act in office was to sign a gargantuan package of stimulus spendingfinanced entirely with debtthat was supposed to jump-start the economy. Congress voted for hundreds of billion of dollars for shovel-ready projects which Obama later discovered <http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/15/obama-lesson-shovel-ready-not -so-ready/> dont exist, and the money disappeared without a trace. How many <http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/sep/3/editorial-another-recovery-s ummer-vanishes/> recovery summers have there been in which growth and employment was finally supposed to take offonly to peter out again? (Hint: the first one was in 2010.) In how many other recoveries has labor force participationthe percentage of people actually working <http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2014/09/not-looking-for-work-why-l abor-force-participation-has-fallen-during-the-recovery> declined? In what other recovery have poor people emerged <http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-09-12/america-s-poor-deeper-in-d ebt-than-ever> deeper in debt than they were at the beginning? Yes, the economy was in crisis when President Obama took office. But he has presided over the <http://www.heritage.org/~/media/infographics/2014/09/bg2722/bg-not-looking- for-work-2014-chart-2-825.ashx> slowest, weakest economic recovery since the Great Depressionand by a good margin. 3. Financial reform didnt reform. But surely, Obama saw to it that we would never repeat the problems that led to the financial crisis and the recession in the first place, right? Except that the Dodd-Frank financial reforms didnt really reform anything. They created a couple thousand pages of new legislation and many, many more new executive-branch regulations, which have helped to <http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2011/07/08/non-objective_law_is_sm othering_the_recovery_99117.html> muddle the rules rather than clarify them. But these regulations have <http://www.propublica.org/thetrade/item/the-buck-stops-with-obama-on-tepid- financial-reform> never really resolved any of the pre-crisis problems. The old system in which a handful of giant financial institutions were considered too big to fail and thus could depend on the rest of us to bail them out? That system is <http://time.com/3085819/banks-living-will-bankruptcy-wall-street/> alive and well. 4. ObamaCare is a boondoggle. The <http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2013/11/07/ten_lessons_of_obamacar e_100715.html> disastrous launch of ObamaCare was a reminder of everything thats wrong with big government. It turns out that when we warned health insurance would be run as well as the Department of Motor Vehicles, we were too optimistic. And no one was ever held accountable for that fiasco. When ObamaCare was passed, we were <http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/09/16/affordable-care-act-helps-america -s-uninsured> assured that it would provide insurance for 32 million people who didnt have any coverage. Four years later, it looks like ObamaCare has covered <http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/05/10/new-mckinsey-survey-74 -of-obamacare-sign-ups-were-previously-insured/> far fewer new people, between 10% and 20% of what was promised, and about half of those were through an expansion of Medicaida burden that will eventually bankrupt the statesrather than through ObamaCares insurance exchanges. Most of the people buying insurance through the exchanges are those who were kicked out of their previous health insurance plans by new regulations. It turns out that if we liked our health insurance, we couldnt keep it. For some of us, this <https://www.tracinskiletter.com/2013/11/obamacare-rage/> will be bad. For others, its <http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230452750457917171042378 0446> much worse. Youre still going to hear a lot of commentators on the left arguing that the law is a great successif you agree to move the goalposts and ignore all the broken promises. But the American people <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/08/01/obamacare-hits-a- new-low-in-popularity-but-its-not-a-dominant-issue/> arent buying it. 5. Obama failed to reform immigration. He spent all of his political capital, and then some, on the failed stimulus and the ObamaCare boondoggle, leaving nothing for immigration reform. Having failed to get anything through Congress, he floated a dubious plan to enact amnesty through a unilateral executive authority that he <http://thefederalist.com/2014/07/03/president-obama-doesnt-understand-repre sentative-government/> doesnt have. Then he dropped the idea. Instead, he has simply failed to enforce the immigration laws, contributing to a <http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/09/08/obama-blames-border-crisis-for-i mmigration-inaction-after-blasting-gop-for/> crisis on our southern border. The result: he has managed to enrage the right, the left, and the middle. He hasnt cracked down on illegal immigration, he hasnt legalized it, and he hasnt forged any kind of compromise or consensus on the issue. Nobody is happy and nothing has been accomplished. 6. He withdrew prematurely from Iraq. Obama was so eager to not be George W. Bush that he pulled all of our troops out of Iraq as soon as possible, then <http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2fu159/im_tim_arango_baghdad_bureau_c hief_for_the_new/ckcs594> totally ignored the country, even as a terrorist threat re-established itself there. For most of this year, he <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/09/us/politics/a-president-whose-assurances- have-come-back-to-haunt-him.html> foolishly downplayed the rise of the Islamic State. Even as Kurds and the Iraqi government issued increasingly panicked warnings, and the Islamic State took over more and more territory, he let the problem get worse for months without bothering to interrupt his golf schedule. A few weeks ago, he admitted to <http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/28/world/meast/isis-iraq-syria/> having no strategy for dealing with the Islamic State. Last week, he hastily assembled one, but its looking like it might be <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/12/isis-deal-syria_n_5814128.html> unrealistic and <http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/13/us-iraq-crisis-coalition-idUSKBN0 H806020140913> lacks international support. Bush went into Iraq with multiple UN resolutions, congressional approval, a broad coalition of the willing, and (as it turned out) the resolve to use whatever means were necessary to prevent a terrorist state from establishing itself there. Obama is going back into Iraq with none of that. So I guess he really isnt anything like George W. Bush. Who could have guessed that he would be the one to suffer by that comparison? 7. He blew the Arab Spring. When a series of uprisings overthrew dictators across the Middle East, Obama failed to adopt any meaningful policy or to turn the situation to our advantage. He dithered for so long on Egypt that all of the factions there hate him, and most of Egypts liberals concluded that he was secretly backing the Muslim Brotherhood. The result is that Egypt went right back to where it was before, except this time the military dictatorship regards America as a useless and irrelevant ally. Meanwhile, the two places where we could have taken advantage of the Arab Spring to get rid of truly nasty dictators who have been hostile to our interests for decadesLibya and Syriaended in disaster. In Libya, the killing of our ambassador in Benghazi was just the beginning of a slow collapse into chaos and <http://time.com/3194852/with-regional-powers-choosing-sides-libya-faces-the -prospect-of-civil-war/> civil war. In Syria, three years of administration dithering allowed the rise of ISIS, which then spilled over into Iraq. And lets not forget about 2009, when Iranians poured out onto the street to oppose their own brutal, theocratic, terror-sponsoring regimeand Obama sat back passively because he preferred to cut a diplomatic deal with the ayatollahs. 8. Obama ignored the threat of a resurgent Russian dictatorship. During a debate with Mitt Romney in 2012, Obama dismissed Romneys suggestion that Russia might be a threat to American interests, <http://thefederalist.com/2014/03/03/the-eighties-called-do-we-want-their-fo reign-policy-back/> sneering, The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back. Now its looking more like the 1970s are calling, with an aggressive Russian dictatorship invading its neighbors, leaving our European allies feeling exposed and unsure whether they can really count on support from the US and NATO. Polands foreign minister has been overheard complaining abouthow shall I put this politely?his countrys <http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/polish-foreign-minister-we-gave-the-us-a-b lowjob-got-nothing#cawue0> unrequited love for America. The presidents response to Russian aggression has been to impose a few more sanctions, make a speech in Estonia, and otherwise ignore the crisis and hope it goes away. 9. He didnt shut down Guantanamo, keep the NSA from spying, or rein in the drones. I know people who sincerely believe that all of these are good policies and who will defend them vigorously if asked. Barack Obama is not one of those people. Yet all of these policies have been pursued during his presidency, on his authority. President Obama came into office having loudly condemned many of the Bush administrations measures against terrorism. Then he continued them. You can call this hypocrisy or you can call it subversion. But President Obama has achieved a unique combination: managing to morally discredit Americas anti-terrorism policies without actually ending them. 10. He has made America irrelevant. You will notice that most of Obamas failures result, not from taking a bold stand, but from taking no stand and just letting events drift. Certainly, in a lot of these cases, Obama has given speeches or press conference to announce his enlightened intentionsthen done nothing to plan for how to actually achieve his goals. But if he is irrelevant, that makes America irrelevant. We can look at the Arab Spring, at Ukraine, and at Iraq, but lets add one more example. For most of his presidency, Obama has declared his intention to pivot to Asia, extricating himself from the Middle East and focusing on bolstering our Pacific allies to peacefully manage the rise of China. Its pretty widely acknowledged that he never managed to do it, letting the Asia pivot <http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230394240457936028224089 2994> die of neglect. This may fit with the quasi-isolationist mood that has taken hold in America in recent years, but it is yet another case where Obama promised something very different. He campaigned on the promise that America would be more respected in the world after the Bush yearsnot that we would be considered a useless ally and an ineffectual opponent. I dont know if you could come up with a more comprehensive list of presidential failures, encompassing foreign policy and domestic policy, economics, race, and immigration. And Im sure I left a lot of things off this list, not least of which is the targeting of Obamas political opponents by a corrupt IRS, which continues to announce the oh-so-mysterious <http://hotair.com/archives/2014/07/21/irs-lawyer-by-the-way-the-hard-drives -of-some-other-employees-who-dealt-with-lois-lerner-also-crashed/> loss of potentially incriminating data by its employees. Combine all of this with his frequent vacations and golf outings and his fascination with the trappings of pop-culture celebrity, and you get the impression that Obama has checked out of the presidency and lost interest in the responsibility he is neither willing nor able to shoulder. Obama was originally elected on the basis of celebrity, on vague slogans about hope and change, on a sense of self-congratulatory smugness about how progressive and enlightened we would all be if we voted for him. He was re-elected on all of that, plus the smearing of his political opposition as racists and mean rich white guys. If the result is an utter failure of leadership, maybe there are a few lessons we ought to learn for the next presidential election. Follow Robert <https://twitter.com/Tracinski> on Twitter. EM On the 49th Parallel Thé Mulindwas Communication Group "With Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja and Dr. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda is in anarchy" Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi "Pamoja na Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja na Dk. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda ni katika machafuko"
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