Three-and-a-Half More Years of Obama!
By J.R. Dunn
AmericanThinker.com
So the Syria "crisis" is reaching its culmination. Syria's WMD's are likely to be placed under the control of its patron, Russia, perhaps even with the cooperation of other disinterested, responsible states such as Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela. The world's only superpower, for its part, will loiter on the curb outside, asking hurried questions while the big boys come and go, stepping aside quickly to avoid being shoved into the gutter by their bodyguards.
This situation is the sole handiwork of Mr. Barack H. Obama, successor in office to Washington, Lincoln, Truman, and Reagan. Pondering the better part of a day, I can think of no previous episode to compare it with. It has similarities to the isolationism of the 1920s, with the United States reduced to irrelevance on the global fringes, but that was a deliberate result of policy, while this... this product of ineptness coupled with ideology, is something you can scarcely put a name to.
There are three-and-a-half years of agony lying ahead. It won't be pleasant, but there is a saving grace. Barack Obama and his childishness, incompetence, and fanatical fixation on dead political ideas constitute the apotheosis of a longer-term conundrum, that of a liberal/left that has infiltrated this country's institutions to a point that state power and interference with individual liberties increases steadily no matter who is in office.
Obama offers us a chance to reject all that decisively. I want every single train of events set in motion by Obama, his administration, and his supporters, down to the last halfwit college undergrad, to play out in full. I want every disaster that fool and his parade of twitches have triggered to blossom in bleak completion. I want to see all their trains collide, all their ships sink, all their airships burnt to cinders.
We're talking tragedy and retribution, in the absolute Greek sense -- the Furies howling at midnight. Maybe that's what it takes to cleanse this nation of this doctrinal pestilence. I want to see every Row A voter reduced to remorse. I want to see their noses rubbed in it. I want to hear each victim of this regime cry out to heaven for vengeance. If all this comes to pass, we may even see Democrats, fearful for their own political hides, wanting to be rid of him.
But if Obama were impeached, none of this would happen. Instead the focus would shift to Congress and the GOP, who then would be blamed for everything that occurs, no matter who -- likely Smilin' Joe Biden -- inhabits the Oval Office. When the disasters come -- and they will (most of them are on track at this moment and can't be turned around except through drastic action which Obama and all other visible Democrats are incapable of) -- they will be dumped into the laps of the Republicans. No other group in modern history has proven more adept at shifting blame than the liberal left, just as no other political party has proven more apt to stumble into the spotlight at the worst possible moment than the GOP.
Looking back from our fine vantage point here at the edge of the Abyss, we can trace the path clearly. Despite popular belief, the New Deal solved nothing. There was a second crash -- one that makes none of the history textbooks -- in October 1937 that wiped out all gains made in the previous four years and left unemployment higher than it had been when FDR entered office. By January 1938, Roosevelt was reduced to pleading with his advisors "Can no one tell me what to do?" Nobody could, and the country continued its downward spiral.
It was saved by Adolf Hitler, who in March annexed Austria, rolling into Vienna behind a spearhead of Panzers. This wakeup call revealed that war was inevitable, and the tariff barriers that had prevented international economic recovery fell as the nations of Europe scrambled to purchase weaponry and supplies. In the U.S., plants reopened (despite an insane attempt -- by the GOP, no less -- to stifle this using the Neutrality Act), industry began to gain ground, and by 1940 the U.S. was back on its feet.
Roosevelt found his sweet spot in leading the Allied coalition to victory, something nobody would have believed him capable of even ten years earlier. The success of FDR the Warlord covered the failure of his economic policies. The New Deal became a retroactive success due to WW II. By this means, the legend of liberal triumph entered American consciousness.
Skipping over Harry Truman, the last practical Democratic president, and John F. Kennedy, the last conservative Democratic president, we come to Lyndon Johnson. LBJ was a pure ideologue, a product of the New Deal who believed its dogma (which, not coincidentally, fitted his paternalistic, controlling persona to near perfection) implicitly. Amid the reaction to JFK's murder, LBJ was able to pass a barge load of ultraliberal programs that would never have seen a vote under ordinary circumstances.: Medicare, Medicaid, the War on Poverty, all comprising what he called his "Great Society". Thanks to Keynesian financing, LBJ managed to suck the life out of the 1960s boom in little more than four years, leaving the nation headed for economic ruin. Along with the Vietnam War and his fumbling of the racial question, this left him as one of the most despised presidents of the century. He abdicated office in 1968, having served only one and a third terms.
But Richard M. Nixon effectively extended Johnson's term in office, continuing his disastrous economic policies ("We are all Keynesians now."), and putting into effect whatever wild-eyed liberal programs Johnson had missed, including affirmative action and establishing the Environmental Protection Agency. (Tom Wicker, ultraliberal New York Times reporter, later wrote a book examining Nixon's record under the title One of Us).
Elected as a reform candidate in the wake of Watergate, Jimmy Carter proved so incompetent that his ideology scarcely mattered (though he was nearly as much as New Deal liberal as LBJ).
Reagan, of course, turned the country around in short order with his commonsense conservative reforms carried out in the teeth of opposition from both liberals and his own party. This set the stage for Bush the Elder, whose liberal tendencies were strong enough to nearly derail the Reagan reforms ("I guess I f***** up in 1980," Reagan responded). Bush allowed himself to be pressured into raising taxes just as the economy hit a soft patch following the dramatic 1980s expansion. The resulting shallow recession wrecked his reelection effort despite his personal popularity.
As for Bill Clinton, he began his first term as a typical New Left clown, out to "tame" Wall Street, and inevitably throw the country back onto the skids. (It was none other than Al Gore who put a stop to this, to give credit where it's due). At the end of that term, Clinton shifted right under pressure from Newt Gingrich's GOP Congress along with the guidance of political operative Dick Morris. This bought him a second term, which he spent chasing women, eating cheeseburgers, and paying the consequences. The country went its own way regardless.
Despite distinct signs of the family liberalism, George W. Bush governed well enough to restore prosperity after a brief recession bequeathed to him by Clinton. His quick action in 2008 was instrumental in saving the economy from complete collapse (the Obama administration added nothing but far huger piles of cash). Then came Obama.
What we see clearly from this record is that American liberals have always managed to avoid responsibility. Global war saved Roosevelt and established the myth of triumphant New Deal liberalism. None of the liberal presidents thereafter -- excepting Clinton -- served two full terms, leaving the consequences of their actions - and the blame -- to be borne by their Republican successors. Clinton avoided this only by shifting to the right. Add to this the fact that several GOP presidents -- Nixon and the Bushes -- stumbled along in a "center" that was actually far to the left, muddying the political record considerably, and it's evident how the narrative has been tilted leftward.
Liberals have never had to pay the piper. They have never had to face their failures or come up with explanations for what went wrong. Neither Johnson nor Carter served second terms in which their errors would have become manifest. Instead, Nixon and Reagan had to bear the responsibility. And of course, the GOP has never made a point of this.
But now we have Obama. The first true progressive to achieve a second term since FDR. There's no "triangulation" needed by the man who knows everything, and no war, it seems, to pull him out of this swamp. Obama will have to take full responsibility for his policies. He will have to stand in the dock, and with him, for the first time in seventy years, liberalism as a whole.
Obama is less lucky than FDR, less competent than Jimmy Carter, and less flexible than Bill Clinton. With Obama, all the failures of liberalism are coming to a head. He has put more liberal policies into effect in a shorter period than any other president, but thanks to his unique combination of ineptness, ignorance, inexperience, and arrogance, every last one of them is doomed. All of them are failing as we watch. His economic policies have repeated the failures of FDR's New Deal, with worse to come. His health care "reform" is in a state of collapse before it has even started. His stewardship of race relations has returned the country to a state of nearly open hostility and panic not seen since 1968. His Hallmark card foreign policy has killed tens of thousands overseas and will almost inevitably lead to the deaths of millions, as did the policies of Jimmy Carter in countries as unrelated as Nicaragua, Iran, Ethiopia, and Cambodia.
Do we really want to give him an out? Do we want to release him to a well-paying sinecure position to become the black Jimmy Carter, an international pest and embarrassment? Do we want to allow the liberal left to slide one more time? To scamper out of the line of fire only to return to mock and sabotage the efforts of better men to clean up the heartbreaking mess they left behind, as they did in the early 1970s, the Reagan 80s, the Bush Oughts? Do we want to see them pop back up in 2020 or 24 with the same nonsense programs given different names and the same insults and attacks for their opponents exhausted and in despair at attempting to repair what can no longer be repaired?
I say no. I prefer that we drink this cup to the dregs, take this road to its lonely end. The liberals need to undergo the whipping that they have dodged for over seven decades. The voters of this country, who have treated politics like a reality series, need to be backhanded by the world as it exists. We require a rude awakening. This country's pols, both left and right, need to be overwhelmed with worry as to what the next day will bring. The people of this country need to be buried up to their necks in the results of their own infantilism. All the fantasy castles need to be demolished to the last stone. Liberalism must be discredited and humiliated, its adherents defeated and dispersed. The leader of the whole circus must be tormented to the human limit and beyond, forced to break down in front of the cameras as he begs for help that will not come.
I am not talking about apocalypse. I am talking about shock therapy. There are dreadful days to come, and they are locked in. We have another recession on its way, perhaps even a stagflation on the 1970s model, which swallowed the entire decade. Having taken in Obama's disgraceful performance as regards Syria, our enemies will now make a move: Russia, China, and Iran, and possibly all three at once. We will not win this round. We have a national security system that is run by wannabe trannies and later-day beatniks. We are operating under the delusion that major military units can be led in battle by gays, transvestites, and what have you. We have convinced ourselves that the 21st-century world can be mastered by weapons purchased in the 1980s. We have sown the wind. We will reap the whirlwind.
We have got it coming. But at the same time, the seeds of resurrection are evident. As I have said elsewhere, I am a disciple of Adam Smith - "There is a lot of ruin in a nation." But we cannot recover in any meaningful sense as long as the same processes are allowed to continue; as long as any cheap demagogue can trot around mouthing the same old slogans and be taken seriously.
Liberalism has outlived its time. Obama is in the process of destroying it. Let it come down.