"When Congress refuses to act and as a result hurts our economy and puts people at risk, I have an obligation as president to do what I can without them." — President Barack Obama
While I always identify the speaker of a quote, it is especially necessary this time. Why? Because if you remove the president's name from the statement, it becomes really easy to imagine any number of other people making it. For example, plug in Chinese president Hu Jintao, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, or Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Is there any doubt that any of these men would we more than willing to act, if they saw an "obligation" to do so, without the messy necessity of dealing with their respective legislative bodies?
Remember when, right after the 2010 election, a lot of the media were wondering if Barack Obama was going to "move to the center" or practice the politics of "triangulation" that got Bill Clinton re-elected? Such musings are a testament to the self-inflicted blindness that affects far too many people who get paid to see through such nonsense.
When this man was running in 2008, I implored Americans to understand that this country was divided by many issues, but first and foremost among those issues was a simple reality: there are those Americans who add up the plusses and minuses of the American experience and come to the conclusion that this country, warts and all, is still the best nation of earth — and the last, best hope of mankind. Then there are those Americans who engage in the same calculations and conclude that we are at best, just another country, and at worst, the nexus of all that is wrong in the world.
Bewitched by the monumental load known as hope and change, Americans put the latter group in charge of running the nation.
They were so bewitched that even when the president, five days before the election, proclaimed he was only that far away from "fundamentally transforming the United States of America," a majority of voters elected a man with the deadliest combination of inexperience, radical ideology and unbridled hubris this nation has ever endured. And just for good measure, they gave him an unassailable majority in Congress including, for a brief time, a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.
After gigantic healthcare and stimulus packages were enacted, and trillions of dollars of additional debt were accrued, the electorate had had enough. In 2010, Democrats lost the House, and their majority in the Senate was considerably trimmed. Which brings us to the second half of Mr. Obama's quote.
"I will not stand by while a minority in the Senate puts party ideology ahead of the people they were elected to serve."
Apparently this president believes that Republicans, who gained 63 seats in the House and 6 seats in the Senate, should have nothing "ideological" to say if it interferes with his agenda. Thus he intends to do "what he can" without them.
What a man less in love with himself might wonder is how those Republicans got there in the first place. They got there because a majority of the American people put them there, after getting a two-year look at what a radical Marxist/Socialist agenda looks like, up close and personal. They may have even figured out that the "fundamental transformation" touted by the faux-Messiah included throwing the Constitutional baby out with the ideologically-impaired Republican bath water.
If they didn't then, they should now. Making "recess" appointments of a consumer "watchdog" and three appointees to the National Labor Relations Board while the Senate is still in session probably isn't the most Constitutionally dubious thing this president has ever done. It's merely the latest. In fact it's not even the most egregious thing he did this week. On Monday, the president signed a defense bill authorizing the detainment of American citizens without due process. And unless you've been living under a rock, you know that both the Department of Justice and the EPA have become little more than extensions of executive power, also absent input from Congress — two years after our biggest banks and auto manufacturers were nationalized.
All for the "good of the nation" as it were.
Once again, I feel compelled to offer my fellow Americans a warning. It is three words: context is everything. Mr. Obama has divided us by race and class, alienated our allies while enabling our enemies, reduced American influence in the world to a historic low, and given us the highest level of debt in the history of the world, courtesy of economic policies that have done virtually nothing to alleviate the suffering of millions of Americans. So what's the context?
All of the above has occurred while this president has been RESTRAINED by the necessity of getting re-elected.
One more year of this man thumbing his nose at the Constitution whenever it suits him will be damaging enough. Five more years? The 2012 election may come down to retiring Mr. Obama — or the Constitution.
