A couple of days ago, an exhausted and emotional President Obama visited privately with some of his campaign workers and reportedly got pretty choked up. At one point, the president’s tears began to flow.
For some reason, the White House decided to release this rare footage, despite the fact that it was recorded at an event the media was not allowed to attend.
Now let’s compare this to the public reaction from just two years ago, when Republican House Speaker John Boehner cried while being interviewed on 60 Minutes about his new role as Speaker of the House…..well, you remember, right?
Here’s what Bill Maher had to say:
“Did you see the new speaker of the House John Boeher cry? He cries a lot. Mr. Boehner you’ve got to stop crying. For one, your tan is going to run. And what’s he going to do if he loses next time? Put on a Bjork record and cut himself?”
Over the last few days, media pundits and amateur pundits on Facebook have been telling us that it is time for cooperation. It is time for the GOP to brush off its brutal losses and begin working with the Democrats. To steal a phrase, It’s time to put people before politics.
But it’s damn hard to accept the media’s blatant hypocrisy. Furthermore, why is it so bad for a man… a strong man, or any man for that matter– to cry? Is it a sign of weakness?
Both Obama and Boehner were captured in honest moments of raw emotional expression. The ability to appropriately express your emotion…whether it’s grief, joy or some hidden pain is generally a sign of good mental health. Do we really want our nation’s leaders bottling up their emotions?
Now, here’s a test. Watch this video and see if it makes you cry….even just a little. I dare ya.
My friends and family know that I cannot watch this scene without crying like a baby. If I were a Democrat, I suppose that would be an endearing quality. But if I am a Republican, I best prepare for some intense criticism.
It will be a lot easier for our nation to heal, if we can just move beyond some of the hypocrisy.
Just moments ago, Mitt Romney did what he does best. He chose the safe bet and once again fumbled the ball in his quest to be the next president of the United States. Mitt ended all speculation by announcing his choice of Paul Ryan as his running mate.
Of course, the right is thumping its chest, joyously proclaiming that President Obama will no longer be able to ignore our country’s miserable economy during an especially malicious campaign.
GOP Nominee Mitt Romney
Meanwhile, the left is busy buying bottles of champagne, prematurely celebrating their victory while putting together a slew of campaign ads that pronounce Ryan as the guy who wanted to kill Medicare. For the record, check what Politifact has to say about the left’s Medicare innuendo.
My prediction? Obama wins by 3 points when he should lose.
Yes, I just said President Obama should lose the election.
Yes, I just said that President Obama will win a second term.
With just one sentence, I have managed to piss off loyalists on both sides of the aisle. So now that I have your attention, allow me to explain my rationale.
Why Obama will win
Romney’s selection of Ryan as a running mate only serves two purposes: 1. it forces Obama back into the debate about the economy, and 2.) it spikes the temperature on the right. But just like four years ago, the GOP has done absolutely nothing with this pick to take from the political center…That is why Obama will squeak out a narrow victory. Palin gave McCain an early bump, but it came up far short on drawing critical votes from the political center.
Why Obama should lose
President Obama screwed up royally even before he was sworn into office for his first term. He set the bar for his presidency far too high. In short, he over promised and under delivered.
That alone is reason enough to justify my decision not to renew his employment contract.
Ask yourself this: Why would such an allegedly smart guy promise so much so soon?
It’s simple. Obama’s “Hope and Change” was a tactic born of grandiose arrogance and fueled by a troubling naiveté of how the world works.
Remember four years ago? This president was going to be so much different. He was going to change Washington. No more business as usual. No more cozying with lobbyists. Superior transparency and political accountability would be the new norm. He was going to fix the economy, end our wars, give us universal health care and stick it to the rich.
“Yes, we can!” he proclaimed without deference to the stark reality that surrounded him.
I was there on that cold, January day when the nation was about to be forever transformed into something so much better. I did not vote for him, but I was genuinely excited to be part of that historic moment when our 44th president was sworn into office.
The crowd on the Capitol Mall was like nothing I had ever experienced. There was an electric excitement in the air. I am a big guy, but I could not secure my footing. When that massive crowd lurched, I lurched…I was literally moved by those throngs of joyous and expectant celebrants.
It was hard not to believe that we were witnessing something much bigger than a new president taking office. Like Chris Matthews,I also experienced a tingling sensation running down my leg… (in retrospect, that may have been the result of really cold temperatures and a lack of restrooms).
But did Obama really overpromise and under-deliver, or am I just a frustrated cynic?
To answer those questions, I offer some analysis and opinion from a broad spectrum of news and media outlets, including: The Huffington Post, Politico, ABC News and Fox.
Let’s now examine the reality of our president’s 2008 campaign promises:
Healthcare: To his credit, Obama tackled one of our nation’s most complex and dysfunctional systems. The result? The government got in bed with huge corporations by using its force of law to require everyone to purchase health care insurance. In exchange, the corporations agreed to change practices including rescission of policy coverage and extending the term of dependent care. If you’re excited about this, you have very low expectations.
Ending the wars and closing Guantanamo Bay: Instead of troops in Iraq, we now have private contractors quietly cleaning things up in the name of democracy and capitalism. Foreign civilians are still being killed by drone strikes and US foreign policy has changed little, especially when considering that we were happy to celebrate and credit this president for crossing into a sovereign nation without permission and executing a criminal without trial. Yay, us! Guantanamo Bay? Still open for business.
Increase Transparency in government: Not so much, at least according to Politico:
“Open-government advocates say some administration practices are actually undercutting Obama’s goal. Among their complaints:
• Administration lawyers are aggressively fighting FOIA requests at the agency level and in court — sometimes on Obama’s direct orders. They’ve also wielded anti-transparency arguments even bolder than those asserted by the Bush administration.
• The administration has embarked on an unprecedented wave of prosecutions of whistleblowers and alleged leakers — an effort many journalists believe is aimed at blocking national security-related stories. “There just seems to be a disconnect here. You want aggressive journalism abroad; you just don’t want it in the United States,” ABC News correspondent Jake Tapper told White House press secretary Jay Carney at a recent briefing for reporters”
Swamped by outside Republican groups in fundraising so far, Obama belatedly decided to give his blessing to so-called super PACs, which can accept unlimited donations from corporations, labor unions and wealthy individuals. Both Obama’s campaign and the White House maintain that the president does not support today’s rules but realized belatedly he must play by them to give himself a competitive chance at a second term.
“He’s not saying that the system is healthy or good,” said Obama spokesman Jay Carney, who was pressed repeatedly about whether Obama’s move was hypocrisy. “He is making the decision, his campaign is making the decision, that the rules are what they are. And they cannot play by a different set of rules than Republicans are playing.”
That’s not consistent with what Obama has said about the groups, though. And now, by putting strategy above all else, Obama opened himself to criticism that he had compromised on principle and succumbed to the rules of the same Washington game he pledged to change.”
Jobs and the Economy: Epic fail and the starkest example of overpromise and under-delivering.
Business Insider: ” . . . the Obama administration drastically underestimated how bad the economy was and drastically overestimated its ability to do something about it.
As a result of this, President Obama over-promised and under-delivered on the single most important challenge of his Presidency: Jobs.”
Huffington Post: “. . . A slew of weak data has led economists in recent weeks to ratchet back their expectations for U.S. economic growth. A Reuters poll published on Wednesday found economists expect the nation’s Gross Domestic Product to expand at only a 2 percent annual rate in the second quarter.
Projections for hiring also have been cut. According to the poll, the economy is likely to add an average of 147,000 jobs a month between now and October, too few to make much of a dent in the nation’s 8.2 percent jobless rate.
As the economic recovery threatens to stall for the third summer in a row, voters are registering deep doubts about Obama’s leadership, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday. More now believe Romney would be stronger than Obama in dealing with the economy and creating jobs. . .”
How is the world better today than it was four years ago? How much has Washington changed? Are you better off than you were in 2008?
Can Mitt Romney do any better? Probably not.
Thus, I am a cynic. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
President Barack Obama is on a roll. After nearly four years of “evolving” on the issue of gay marriage, he finally caught up to former Vice President Dick Cheney.
As expected, there has been much media hoopla about Mr. Obama’s sudden profile of “courage” regarding this very controversial social issue.
But is all the praise deserved?
Not quite, . . . at least according to some observers who say that Obama is still dancing around the issue.
For starters, The Atlantic reminds us of what Cheney said in 2009 on the issue of gay marriage:
“Well, I think that freedom means freedom for everyone,” Cheney said. “. . . I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish. Any kind of arrangement they wish. The question of whether or not there ought to be a federal statute that governs this, I don’t support . . . It has always been a state issue, and I think that’s the way it ought to be handled today, that is on a state-by-state basis.”
So why exactly did Mr. Obama wait three years to say the very same things that Dick Cheney said in a July 2009 interview?
Is he worried about his upcoming election? Did he have an epiphany? Was it the result of a recent referendum in North Carolina?
Not exactly.
Obama got put into a box by his No. 2.
A few days ago, Vice President Joe Biden had a stunning moment of clarity that apparently caused lots of hand wringing in the Oval Office.
Biden made it abundantly clear that he supports gay marriage. For nearly 48 hours, the media was talking more about Biden than Obama.
That will just not do.
So, the prez called his buddies at ABC and cautiously waded into the pool, offering some rather tepid remarks about an issue that should be at the forefront of his party’s platform.
” . . .[Obama] now believes that gay couples should be able to marry. He doesn’t believe they have a right to do so. This is like saying that black children and white children ought to attend the same schools, but if the people of Alabama reject that notion—what are you gonna do?”
Gawker correctly reminds us why the president’s words were so lame and pathetic:
” . . . before Roe v. Wade, abortion was a state-by-state issue, too. So was slavery. There are 44 states in which gay men and women are currently barred from marrying one another. Obama’s position is that, while he would have voted the other way, those 44 states are perfectly within their rights to arbitrarily restrict the access of certain individuals to marriage rights based solely on their sexual orientation.”
If our president had real courage or anything remotely resembling integrity, here is what he should have said:
“Gay people have the right to get married just the same as atheists, heterosexuals or any other consenting adult. Marriage is a deeply personal issue, and our government should acknowledge and respect the decisions of all marriages without deference to religion, gender, sexual orientation or race.
“I will make it a central point of my second term to ensure that every gay person has the same rights as every other American. I will take this message to each and every one of our 50 states and sell it door-to-door if I have to. It is just the right thing to do, and anyone who values liberty and personal freedom ought to be standing proudly with me on this issue. Period.”
Well, we can hope for change, right?
Yeah, don’t hold your breath looking for real leadership from either Mr. Obama or Mr. Romney on this issue.
Oh yeah, one more thing: Which president signed the Defense of Marriage Act and deployed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?
During an interview on CNN this week, Freeman told interviewer Piers Morgan that racism is at the heart of the Tea Party and that racism has been made worse in the United States since the election of President Barack Obama.
Condelezza Rice
I wonder how Freeman would feel about supporting Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as a nominee for the high court’s chief justice slot; or about a presidential run by Condolezza Rice? I’m betting he would not support either of them; just as he is not supporting Herman Cain, an African American who is also seeking the GOP nomination for president.
I also don’t recall Freeman hosting any fundraising dinners for Alan Keyes, a fellow African American who made two unsuccessful bids for the presidency.
From my perspective, Freeman is screaming racism because he cannot handle the real reasons that Obama’s re-election in 2012 is anything but certain.
The things that are making Obama increasingly unpopular, even among members of his own party, are the same things I listed as reasons for not supporting him in 2008:
His inexperience in the realm of business and finance;
His failed economic policies;
His desperate need to be liked rather than be strong.
I do think it’s worth noting that I actively worked on behalf of Hillary Clinton during the 2008 nomination process, and ultimately voted for John McCain.
I attended President Obama’s inauguration. It was an awe-inspiring experience; several days of basking in a revived sense of hope and change for a country that seemed tragically off-course and without direction.
Morgan Freeman
I’ve got news for you, Mr. Freeman: I do not want to vote for this hip, attractive and intelligent man because he is woefully out of his league, much the same as his predecessor was.
But unless John Huntsman gets the GOP nomination ( a scenario as likely as Susan Lucci receiving an Oscar) I will be forced to give Mr. Obama another four years of on-the-job training, because inexperience and idealism still trumps stupidity.
A couple of days ago, an exhausted and emotional President Obama visited privately with some of his campaign workers and reportedly got pretty choked up. At one point, the president’s tears began to flow.
LESSONS IN MEDIOCRITY 