Discussing President Obama’s handling of the looming and dreaded ‘sequester’, on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” today, long standing member of the “mainstream press” Bob Woodward lamented that Obama’s behavior illustrated “a kind of madness that I haven’t seen in a long time.”
Woodward illustrates with clarity and common sense how Obama’s behavior is far outside the norm of Presidential expectations:
….But I think it’s possible to take one example here, where President Obama came out and acknowledged that we are not sending a, the aircraft carrier Truman to the Persian Gulf because of this budget agreement, now, now uh Joe, this will resonate with you I think, can you imagine Ronald Reagan sitting there and saying “oh by the way I can’t do this because of some budget document or George W Bush saying you know I’m not going to invade Iraq because I can’t get the aircraft carriers I need or even Bill Clinton saying you know I’m not gonna attack Saddam Hussein’s intelligence headquarters as he did when Clinton was President because of some budget document? Under the Constitution the President is Commander in Chief and employs the force and so we now have the President going out because of this piece of paper and this agreement uh “I can’t do what I need to do to protect the country?”, that’s a kind of madness that I haven’t seen in a long time…..
Welcome back to reality Mr. Woodward. I and others have been trying to tell you and your colleagues for years now that Obama’s penchant for demagoguery aside, he is just not qualified for the job.
Or to put it another way, Obama is just too small minded for such a large office.
The office of the Presidency of the United States of America, if its duties are to be carried out effectively and Constitutionally, requires that whoever sits in the chair have more than just election results in his corner.
He must be able to do more than give a good speech. He must be able to do more than fan the flames of fear. He must be able to put aside the adulation and the cheers of the campaign.
When the time comes, he must be adult enough to put away the toys, leave the playroom and cross the hall to the den. That boring old den where Presidents do what they are supposed to do: govern.
It’s not sexy, it’s not glitzy, it’s not a constant stroking of the ego, but it IS the most important part of the job.
When a President ignores the “adult” part of his employment contract he does more than just put his “legacy” at risk, he throws the entire nation into unnecessary turmoil and division and causes real and actual harm to tens of millions.
And at this time of historically high gas prices, shrinking package sizes on the supermarket shelves, real unemployment in double digits, and family incomes stagnant or falling, Obama is contributing far more than his“fair share” to the economic misery index.
But what’s most disgusting of this latest Obama/Alinsky road tour is that the President isn’t even being truthful about the, who, what, why and when of how the sequester came about in the first place.
In the same segment, Woodward noted that the overriding goal of the 2011 negotiations was to make sure that Obama would not have to go through another debt ceiling increase battle prior to the 2012 election.
…He was absolutely desperate to get something, so He got his benefit and now he wants to come back and say “wait a minute uh let’s put some taxes in here which he’d agreed in the sequester not to do. Now the White House has a point, that there was always discussion about some more tax increases but the President got a lot of tax increases a month ago and uh quite frankly I think it, a deal, can be made here, but these people have to sit down….
While Woodward’s “colleague” at the Post, Obama fan club chairman Ezra Klein disputes that Obama is now “moving the goal posts”, no sane or rational person can dispute that the actions of the President of the United States over these past ten days has been anything remotely resembling, “Presidential”behavior.
No one has yet been able to explain just why Obama refuses to quit playing with his campaign toys and actually start doing his job, but for lack of any more fitting word, I must agree with Woodward on this one.
It is, without a doubt: “madness”.
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