Phenomenal Failure
Once again the White House has shown that failure, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
Michelle Obama gave an interview to the All Barack Channel’s Good Morning America in which she said her husband, the community activist who would be king, "has done a phenomenal job". She then added that people have a right to criticize him.
That just doesn’t make sense to me. If I felt somebody was doing a “phenomenal job”, regardless of whether it was my spouse, my president, or a complete stranger, I would find it impossible to give acquiescence to unwarranted criticism as justified. Perhaps the first lady was simply being dismissive of the criticism and stating that it is constitutionally protected free speech. But regardless of its legal protections I would still find it necessary to debate what I saw as superfluous negativity on its merits alone. Of course, then I would need to be prepared to defend my “phenomenal job” appraisal with some facts and figures of phenomenal accomplishments. And therein lays the rub.
The first lady admitted that people are still suffering and that unemployment is still tragically high, but she insists that the president “wakes up serious and focused and committed to pushing this stuff through.” And that may be the most telling comment of all. It shows just how out of touch this White House administration is with reality. The major problem the country faces is that “this stuff”, of which she speaks, is the leading hindrance to the nation’s economic recovery.
It is “this stuff” that has taken a national deficit that candidate Obama vigorously campaigned against as being untenable and tripled it to the level of catastrophic. It is “this stuff” that had the newly elected president signing an executive order to close Guantanamo Bay while a year later still having no idea where to even hold the trial of the accused much less detain and house them. It is “this stuff” that nationalized once private industries like the automakers only to find them a year later still completely incapable of overcoming their labor cost inequities with the rest of the world market and equally incapable of financial independence through profitability. It is “this stuff” that literally locked out opposing views to the nationalization of health care and brought all other important legislation to a grinding halt until its ultimate defeat at the hands of a Massachusetts Senate seat special election. It is “this stuff” that gave the constitutional rights that tens of thousands of Americans have given their life to protect, to wanton terrorists whose only goal in life is to dismantle or destroy them. It is “this stuff” which threatens the nation’s financial institutions with a discriminatory method of penalization that will do nothing but increase the reluctance of banks to free up credit and grow the economy. It is “this stuff” that threatens the nation’s industrial base with plans for untenable and useless cap and trade penalties that will do nothing to protect the environment and simply increase the cost base inequities between American products and those of developing nations. It is “this stuff” that has Democrats looking for an exit strategy before they institute a battle plan in Afghanistan and it is “this stuff” that has the same Democrats looking for a political exit strategy before the voters go the polls in November.
I understand Michelle Obama’s desire to defend her husband and would expect nothing less than her lending him her full public support. But to claim that the job he has done through the first quarter of his term as being phenomenal is, quite frankly, more than I can swallow. Perhaps if Mrs. Obama’s betrothed was still a community activist one could argue that his ideas are what makes him phenomenal. But as President of the United States there is only one word to describe his results.
And phenomenal ain’t it.
