In C. S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, he pictures Hell, not as a fiery place of torment, but as a drizzly, grey, depressing village where people are doomed to live dull, desperate, repetitive existences forever. Heaven, on the other hand, is a place of brilliant color, sensory adventures and thrilling surprises. Heaven is hyper-real, so that even the grass is almost sharp and hurtful until one becomes accustomed to its vibrant reality.
Back at 2004, when Barack Obama strode onto the stage at the Democrat National Convention as a virtually unknown Illinois State Senator, he electrified the delegates with his speech and became a household name. Then in 2008, when crowds swooned at the eloquence of his oratory, it was represented to us that his would be an administration of lofty goals and soaring ideals.
Instead…
As we approach the presidential election, I am surprised that I see President Obama, not as the charismatic leader he sold himself as, nor even as the dangerous idealogue he appeared to many of us, but as an aimless, dull functionary. I suppose that shouldn’t be surprising, since he did little to distinguish himself in the Illinois legislature and was mostly AWOL in the Senate. Even after becoming president, he essentially outsourced his signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act – ObamaCare, to the Democrat majority in Congress.
Instead of wow-ing us with innovative, revolutionary solutions to the problems facing humanity, Obama has done very little of substance, except try to remake America into Greece or the Soviet Union when it was in decline. Lewis’ grey Hell.
In The Amateur, Ed Klein reports that early on, Obama was already worrying about his legacy and asking random staffers which president he was most like. His boosters have said FDR or JFK; his detractors have said Carter or Wilson. However, in June it began to appear that his administration is more like Nixon’s, but without the foreign policy successes. He seems to have achieved the unlikely stance of having a bunker mentality while appearing on TV almost everyday. Though always in the public eye, he has become increasingly isolated even from Democrats.
We learned that he has a “kill list”, and enjoys personally directing the firing of missiles from drones to kill terrorists. But he also regularly rails against his perceived enemies in the press and Congress, as well as his favorite whipping boys on Wall Street, reminding us of Nixon’s Enemies List.
And then, to avoid handing over damning documents concerning “Fast and Furious”, he invoked Executive Privilege. I wonder, when we do finally see the documents, if they will have an 18-page gap? But, nobody died in Watergate.
His speeches lately have the petulance of a teenager who has been told, “No, you can’t have the car tonight.” He apparently believed his own PR: that everything would come up roses if he was just allowed to be in charge. But there’s always someone who isn’t cowed by his greatness: the Republicans, Wall Street, Congress, George W. Bush, Europe, Israel, Japanese Earthquakes, etc. The president’s irritation at encountering the slightest difficulty or disagreement betrays his lack of experience and knowledge of the basics of leadership, such as team-building, inspiration and marketing. He complains bitterly about having to talk to “Podunk congressmen” to get his policies passed.
The president, at his theatrical Nomination Victory Ceremony, said that it was “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow”. That sounded delusional to most of us at the time, but now it appears he thought it could really happen and he wouldn’t need to break a sweat.
It appears now that Obama’s view of the world is anything but optimistic. The “Hope” was just hype and the “Change” was not for the better. The academics he brought to Washington are now known to be sniping amateurs, very much out of their depth, with virtually no experience in the private sector, where results matter, or even in government for the most part. Obama’s erudition during the 2008 campaign now just sounds like idealistic naivete divorced from the experience of grappling with real problems.
Problems can be solved, however it takes more than condescending, elitist theorizing. Work hard or work smart, but either way, rolling up your sleeves and working is not optional. Obama has made criticism of Mitt Romney’s business experience a centerpiece of his 2012 campaign, but it only serves to highlight his own inexperience and ineffectiveness in generating the “recovery”.
Unlike the leftist vision of Big Government, Big Business, Big Unions and Big Journalism, in which everyone must fit into prescribed pigeon-h0les and face a dull life with little opportunity for betterment, conservative/libertarian policies promote creativity and limitless horizons for personal and professional development for everyone, with opportunity for lifting oneself and others from poverty and the accomplishment of great goals. We just need a lean, limited government to do what only it can do and leave the rest to us: private citizens, private business, etc.
With the Supreme Court upholding Obamacare last week, we now see that, barring a successful repeal, we can look forward to a fresh, grey Hell in which layers of soulless bureaucracy are superimposed on our already byzantine health insurance system, making patient-doctor confidentiality less possible than it is now and making appeal for soaring premiums or denied coverage impossible.
Obama’s ideal of the state-run economy is nearly a reality with the sweeping nature of the “Affordable” Care Act, but the oppressive behemoth forebodes a dreary, one-size-fits-all life for us all. Instead of aiming for the stars, or at least the moon, President Obama has chosen to fire his arrow into the dirt.
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