An Unserious Presidency On View
IBDEditorials.com
Leadership: As Americans suffer economically, President Obama golfs, vacations, campaigns, appears on a frivolous talk show — and vacations some more. Gee, don't we have a war and other problems to attend to?
Will history record that Barack Obama's only great achievement as president was getting his golf handicap down to the teens? The president played more than two dozen rounds of golf in his first year in office — as many as George W. Bush did over his entire eight years.
This week, he traveled to New York City to be swooned at on ABC's daytime gal fluff-fest "The View." It led Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell to remark, "I think there should be a little bit of dignity to the presidency... I think the president of the United States has to go on serious shows."
The city's Transit Authority warned that between 2 p.m. and 10 p.m. at least 32 bus lines in Manhattan and the Bronx "could be either severely delayed or detoured" as a result of the president's trip.
And while tying up traffic in the Big Apple, the president also headlined fundraisers at the Four Seasons Hotel and at a big donor's home. This week has him on for two other moneymaking events for the Democratic National Committee too. He will soon travel to Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas and Austin for more.
With the unemployment rate near double digits, in spite of over $800 billion in a misguided Keynesian stimulus, and two-thirds of Americans believing the country is headed in the wrong direction — that direction being global decline — the man elected on a platform of "Change" with a capital C seems to think his job is to neglect his job and have a blast.
His vacation in Bar Harbor, Maine is followed by another vacation in that elitest of lefty locales, Martha's Vineyard, where he can tee off on Mink Meadows, a "classic 1936 Wayne Stiles design" that "is a challenge to both novices and low-handicappers."
Next month, the first lady and nine-year-old Sasha will meet the king and queen of Spain on yet another vacation.
At taxpayer expense, this president flies to Broadway to take the first lady on a date.
Among the stars he's summoned to the White House to play court jester are Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Emmylou Harris, Herbie Hancock, Elvis Costello, Jerry Seinfeld, "three of country music's biggest acts" including Charley Pride, and earlier this month a Broadway cavalcade of stars that was "the sixth in a series of evenings celebrating the music that helped to shape America."
Why so much luxury as so many suffer and there are so many monumental problems to solve? Because, according to the president, "part of what gets us through tough times is music, the arts, the ability to capture that essential kernel of ourselves, that part of us that sings even when times are hard."
Millions of Americans have little to sing about as they seek to re-enter the work force and earn a few kernels.
Our present challenges demand more than a part-time president.
His hand-picked commander in the war in Afghanistan, which candidate Obama said must be won, recently self-destructed, and has been followed by a hemorrhage of secret documents damaging the war effort. Former CIA director Michael Hayden this week said military action against Iran may soon be the only option.
Domestically, the president has let the Gulf Coast oil cleanup effort be bungled by conflicts with the affected states, and he imposed a moratorium on oil drilling that has sparked popular discord among area residents whose livelihoods depend on oil.
At a time when the entitlements of Social Security and Medicare are headed for a fiscal train wreck, he imposes a new entitlement in the form of ObamaCare. And he signs a Wall Street "reform" that strengthens rather than scraps the too-big-to-fail policy at the root of the financial crisis.
Rather than working hard to solve problems — and perhaps knuckling down to re-assess his own failed policies — this president, in whom so many placed so much faith, is saddling us with new problems.
But hey, thanks to the taxpayers, at least he's leading the good life.