Completely Self Absorbed, Obama Gets Up And Just Talks For An Hour Straight...The Onion
- Permit me to begin with perhaps the lie of the year coming out of Nancy Pelosi's Botox injected mouth when referring to Pres. Obama yesterday: "one of the most practically non-partisan presidents I have seen in the White House." USA TODAY
- The signs that Pres. Obama is disengaged and detached go back several years now. In 2011, Ron Suskind's reported in his book, Confidence Men, Pres. Obama was indecisiveness during the health care debate. Suskind said Obama was the same when it came to cabinet meetings on the economy and jobs. Suskind also wrote then, "He {Obama} has vanished into a cloud of endless policy debates and irreconcilable factions...so often divorced from measurable deeds."
- In October of 2011, Michael Goodwin of the NY Post wrote this after hearing countless stories from others in the White House about Obama's disconnect with others: : "President Obama has become a lone wolf. He talks mostly, and sometimes only, to friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod, political strategist...Everyone else, including members of his cabinet have little face-time with him." (By the way, it puts in perspective why we no little of Pres. Obama's background. Perhaps he's behaved this way all of his life).
- All of this and more reminded me of Peggy Noonan who wrote the Obamas are everywhere but doing nothing. About this same time, I happened to write a piece wondering whether the Obama presidency had jumped the shark (March 4, 2013). That was followed by a statement by Vali Nasr, former special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, who reported Pres. Obama as "dithering, controlling and risk aversive." (UK Telegraph).
- And just today, Michael Medved wrote an interesting article that appears to reinforce many of these earlier claims ("Obama Needs A Prime Minister," USA TODAY). He writes of the president, "he {Obama} lacks practical political expertise and an appetite for details." In the body of Medved's piece he continued with this: "The current incumbent revels in his role as head of state, but it increasingly seems the only aspect of his job he relishes. Obama escapes Washington at every opportunity for worshipful crowds in campaign-style events."
- We've heard the old refrain many times in our lives: If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck then it's probably a duck. It's clear---from too many reputable and reliable sources---that his president is disengaged and detached from his primary job as leader of the nation (how often have we heard the accusation that he "leads from behind?").
- Is anyone really surprised at the state of this Union when we have a president who shows a clear lack of interest in many of the critical issues facing the nation? For example, we still have no idea where Pres. Obama was as our embassy in Benghazi was being attacked. How often have we witnessed Jay Carney basically tell reporters, "we don't know?"
- It's clear Pres. Obama is not one who "walks-the-talk." Perhaps Michael Goodwin said it best: "Because presidential leadership is indispensable, the only thing worse than a bad president is an absent one. Unfortunately, with Obama, we have both." And unfortunately for this president, few are listening to him anymore.
