The Post-Decency Pretender

In an October 27, 2009 article for the Wall Street Journal, editorial writer William McGurn refers to Barack Obama as “The Post-Gracious President.”  In support of that characterization McGurn cites the unprecedented and never-ending digs at George W. Bush that are the stock-in-trade of almost everyone in the Obama regime and the Democrat Congress. 

If the economic news is bad, it’s Bush’s fault.  If Massachusetts is inundated by flood waters or if Florida is flattened by a hurricane, it’s Bush’s fault.  If Obama finds it convenient to turn his back on the Israelis in order to appease his soul-mate, Ahmadinejad, it’s because Bush filled the Israelis’ heads with too much false hope.  And if Michelle complains of being a bit “irregular,” it’s probably because she can’t cope with the thought that George W. Bush once used the same “facilities” she is now forced to use.  It’s all Bush’s fault. 

Bush, of course, refuses to respond, relying on Dick Cheney to be the sole defender of his presidency.  Whether it’s because he is genetically incapable of defending himself… he being his father’s son… or if it is because he adheres to the old adage about the consequences of “lying down with dogs,” we can’t really say.  All we know is that Bush appears blithely unconcerned that, in the minds of Obama and his Chicago henchmen, he is not a respected former president; he is merely the “piñata of the year.”  Never mind that his refusal to defend himself makes it all but impossible for the rest of us to defend him. 

McGurn points to a constant theme, a line Obama has repeated so often that he no longer has to read it from his teleprompter.  Obama is fond of saying, “I don’t mind cleaning up the mess that some other folks made; that’s what I signed up to do.  But while I’m there mopping the floor, I don’t want somebody standing there saying, ‘You’re not mopping fast enough.’ ”

Clearly, Obama is not the brightest bulb on the porch… witness the few occasions when he has been called upon to speak extemporaneously.  If someone with a lot of money and clout hadn’t bought his way into Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard, he’d still be struggling to maintain a 2.0 GPA at some community college in Hawaii.  The point is, with a minimal amount of brain power he should be able to figure out that the last thing conservatives and Republicans want is for him to mop faster.  He can’t seem to grasp that what we want is for him to simply stop mopping. 

Nevertheless, we should thank him for providing us with the mental picture of him armed with a mop and a bucket.  Perhaps if we handed him a shovel and had him climb into the bottom of a hole, that might also be a “teachable moment” for him.  

McGurn reminds us of Obama’s inaugural address.  After tossing an obligatory flower or two at George Bush and John McCain, Obama switched from bouquets to mud in a New York second.  He announced that he had been elected because Americans had “chosen hope over fear.”

It was as if George W. Bush had announced in his first inaugural address, with Bill Clinton standing nearby, that henceforth the Oval Office would be used only for conducting the people’s business… his personal affairs (wink, wink) would be restricted to the family living quarters.  Of course, Republicans have far too much class for that sort of “cheap shot.”   

On his first overseas junket, the first time he was able to get his hands on the keys to Air Force One, he demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of American exceptionalism, telling a French audience that there have been times when “America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.”  The fact is, from World War I through the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, America has been nothing if not selfless.  Those wars, individually and collectively, were the most unselfish acts ever performed by one nation on behalf of another. 

But Obama, a man who lacked the courage to wear the uniform of his country’s fighting forces, would have no way of knowing that.  It is the beneficiaries of American selflessness… his  leftist admirers in Germany, France, Great Britain, and other countries… who have been “dismissive, even derisive,” of American exceptionalism. 

McGurn notes that in May of 2009, when Obama first signaled that he would go back on his pledge to close Guantanamo Bay, he explained that, “We’re cleaning up something that is, quite simply, a mess… The problem of what to do with Guantanamo detainees was not caused by my decision to close the facility, the problem exists because of the decision to open Guantanamo in the first place.” 

It is typical Obama-think.  It’s as if Adolph Hitler had complained that the Holocaust would never have happened if only all those Jews hadn’t insisted on living in Europe.     

Like nearly all liberals, Obama appears unable to comprehend that Guantanamo Bay is the ideal place in which to hold and interrogate the world’s most dangerous terrorists.  He and his attorney general, Eric Holder, would rather relocate them to a small town in northern Illinois where local residents will have cause to fear, every day, that al Qaeda will take out their wrath on the local community.  The Obama decision to move the world’s most dangerous terrorists from an island in the Caribbean, from which there is no escape, to a maximum security prison at Thompson, Illinois… a community of 708 residents… is an open invitation to disaster. 

Yes, the Clintons were evil, but they were motivated by nothing more than sheer avarice.  Obama is far worse.  He appears motivated by nothing more than a deep-seated hatred for the country he purports to lead. 

In recent days Obama has humiliated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, berating him in a White House meeting for allowing the construction of additional housing units in a Jewish section of East Jerusalem.  Obama then reportedly left the room abruptly, leaving Netanyahu with the words, “Let me know what you decide.” 

Then, on the day that Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife, and 94 senior officials of the Polish government were laid to rest in Warsaw, Obama stayed home in Washington because of an erupting volcano in Iceland.  However, instead of paying his respects at the Polish embassy, something that any decent American leader would have done, Obama raised a foursome and played a round of golf.  It was crass insensitivity.

On April 15, Obama spoke at a $30,000 per couple Democratic fundraiser at the home of Gloria and Emilio Estefan in Miami.  In his prepared remarks, he ridiculed the Tea Party movement, saying he was “amused” by their rallies.  Then, in the most preposterous statement of all, he went on to say, “You would think they would want to thank me.”

What sort of man would publicly ask to be thanked for taking his own countrymen down the road to ruin?  Is it that sort of narcissism that caused McGurn to refer to Obama as a “post-gracious” president?  The truth is, the American people will give Obama the “thanks” he deserves in November when Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid lose their jobs.  

On January 20, 1989, the day that George H.W. Bush was inaugurated, I attended a special inaugural ball honoring all of the living recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor.  As I stood in the middle of the Grand Ballroom at the Capitol Hilton that evening, I found myself surrounded by no fewer than fifty-three men, all wearing that beautiful light blue ribbon draped around their collars… the precious medal itself, the five-pointed star, dangling just below their black bow ties.  When I tried to imagine the incredible acts of courage that those men had performed on the field of battle I was filled with awe just to be in the same room with them. 

On that day in January 1989, none of us had even heard of Barack Hussein Obama.  He had just wrapped up a brief career as a “community organizer” in South Chicago and had moved on to attend Harvard Law School on someone else’s dollar.  But to think that men such as those who wear the Congressional Medal of Honor would ever be required to take orders from the likes of Barack Obama is simply unthinkable. 

In fact, I cringe each and every time I see Obama striding purposefully across the south lawn of the White House, headed for Marine One.  I cringe because I know that some young Marine will be standing tall at the door of the chopper, and that that young Marine will be required to salute a man who is a pretender, ineligible to serve in the office he occupies, but who has not earned the right to be saluted by any American military man or woman.

Conservative blogger, Alan Caruba, describes him best.  In a January 2010 article titled “Obama’s Make-Believe Life,” Caruba says, “Barack Obama exists only as the sock puppet of his handlers, of the people who have maneuvered and manufactured this pathetic individual’s life… We laugh at the ventriloquist’s dummy, but what do you do when the dummy is President of the United States of America? ”

Yes, Obama may have been a “post-gracious” president in October 2009 when William McGurn attached that label to him, but he has built on his record and his reputation since then.  I prefer to call him the “post-decency pretender.”