President Obama entered office on January 20th, 2009. Although I opposed Obama in light of his complete lack of any executive experience and a professional résumé that consisted almost entirely of experience as a Chicago-based community organizer (aka, self-appointed agitators whose work often consists of holding companies and governments hostage in exchange for valuable benefits, much of which they pocket themselves — See Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson in this vein). Obama was also a non-paid teacher (not a “professor” as he later claimed) at the University of Chicago law school where he fashioned himself an expert on Constitutional law. His claim to fame in this role was his pitch that the U.S. Constitution needed to be more than a charter of what he termed “negative liberties” and instead enshrine governmental give-aways as the supreme law of the land. But I digress.
A law school professor friend asked me back during the 2008 presidential campaign, which of the two candidates (Senator John McCain of Arizona lost to Obama that year) had a better chance to be genuinely great president. In light of the unfortunate reality that John McCain had no chance to be such a president, I admitted that Obama had a better, albeit only very slight chance, of being anything north of mediocre. I added that in light of his experience and what he wrote in his quasi-biography entitled Dreams From My Father, that the likelihood was that he’d be lousy. Yet I expressed my hope that if he did one thing and only one thing only, namely improve what were at that time decent race relations, he’d be righteously lauded as an historic figure. Obama let this “promise” be widely shared in the lead-up to his election.
Instead, after only a few months in office, Obama interfered in a small-time police matter in Cambridge MA in which a black and former professor Henry Louis Gates of Harvard Law was arrested for throwing a tantrum when challenged by a policeman who responded to a late-night 911 call by a neighbor — a neighbor who had reported to police that Gates was engaged in what appeared to be a break-in — into what turned out to be his own house. The abusive Gates was arrested for disorderly conduct by police sergeant James Crowley, a charge later dropped.
President Obama couldn’t resist weighing-in on the matter, making his first public utterance of the theme that was to became the defacto motto for his tenure in office, namely that “…there’s a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately.” Certainly not true in the Gates matter, Americans who thought Obama might show presidential restraint in such matters were appalled at the behavior of the former community organizer now occupying the Oval Office. Controversy swirled for a time so several months later, Obama hosted what was termed a “Beer Summit” with Gates and Crowley at the White House in hopes of making it all go away. But it was not to be, Obama would not let it go away. Although Trayvon Martin (“… if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon…”) and others were yet to come, it quickly became clear that the only sort of leadership Obama would offer in terms of race relations would be a repeated and reflexive default to supporting anyone of color, victim or not. Thus, Obama not only failed to improve race relations, his “leadership” over his eight years in the White House made them worse.
Yet back in mid-2009, the silliness was just getting started. In October 2009, Obama himself admitted his surprise when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize based on “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” Such laud was nearly laughed at even by his supporters in light of his having spent only eight months in office and having done none of the things for which the prize was ostensibly awarded. Most felt the real reason was that the international left was seeking to co-opt Obama early-on into doing their will. Despite later failing at health care reform, failing to inspire the American economic juggernaut in the wake of a recession, squandering over a trillion dollars in stimulus spending, igniting the Arab Spring and civil war across the Middle East and North Africa, calling ISIS the jayvee team and his leadership failures that led to the mess in Syria and the Russians invading and occupy parts of the Ukraine, I give Obama a bit credit for not being as ridiculously bad as the Nobel Committee apparently hoped he would be. However, overall he merits no credit for being a great president, indeed he’s among our worst.
Now comes Donald Trump — elected because people are worn out at the corruption of Washington DC, the corruption of international bodies like the United Nations and the European Union. Americans who are worn out by the pathological lying and career-long influence-selling criminality of Hillary Clinton and her hubby, former President Bill Clinton — the latter has the historic devil-mark of being only the second president ever impeached — for committing perjury while in office.
So, in the wake of the 2016 Presidential election, I suggest no one hold their breaths for the Nobel Peace Prize Committee to name Donald J. Trump their next winner in 2017. (The sometimes buffoonish and often boorish Trump got my vote because I voted against Hillary Clinton.) But I have little doubt that Trump will be better than Nobel Peace Prize laureate Barack Hussein Obama when it comes at trying to accomplish what’s needed for American (and the world). And more should have seen back in 2008 that Obama was ripe to fail from the git-go. Indeed it was all pretty-much clear even back then, especially to the few who actually read Dreams From My Father. Let us all hope that Trump’s book The Art of the Deal is half as as predictive.
Tags: 2016 election Bill Clinton Hillary Clinton Obama Trump
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