Sep 08 2011
What If The President Gave A Speech And Nobody Tuned In?
President Obama has missed his window of opportunity – big time. He has had many chances to salvage his presidency over the last 2+ years, and he ignored and missed all of them. The last opportunity he blew was when the nation’s voters sent him a massive GOP freshman class to the House of Representatives to allow him one last chance to prove all the rhetoric he spouted about leadership and bridging the partisan divide.
And boy, did he blow that opportunity. He never took the opportunity to lead in a bipartisan manner, instead it was all petulance, all the time. There was a small ray of hope when the Bush tax cuts were extended in quasi bipartisan fashion in the lame duck, Democrat led Congress in 2010. But after that, Obama fell into full throated, liberal, partisan demagoguery instead of bipartisan leadership. He flailed away on the remainder of the 2011 budget (which ends this month). He won lots of concessions and the GOP was left with no substantial cuts (there couldn’t be, since the budget was only for a couple of months), but Obama failed to head the message of 2010. He failed to move to the center, play nice with others, and stop spending like a drunken sailor.
Same thing happened on the debt ceiling debate. The GOP walked away with no real fixes and more empty promises of future adult and fiscally responsible behavior out of dysfunctional DC. But that was not what the voters wanted, and Obama’s immediate return to massive spending (consuming a good chunk of the new limit in a mater of weeks) left voters realizing 2010 was not going to shift the mindset of DC. That was when all hope ended for positive change.
So now the President is going to give another speech promoting more impotent and useless government efforts to avoid the obvious steps to putting our economy right (i.e, tax cuts, rolling back bureaucratic red tape, real spending cuts). Not surprisingly, it looks like no one is going to tune in. It’s so bad even the GOP is not bothering to rebut what is clearly a rehash of failed liberal fantasies. Keynesian economics is dead and buried. The nation gets it, so the GOP does not even have to bother repeating it. Best to get on with some football!
We know what will happen. Obama is going to whine about lack of action in Congress, while a pile of House bills lay languishing in the Senate under veto threats from a petulant and inexperienced President. Why should anyone care about another political speech that will do nothing, as unemployment continues to rise back up again? Why even waste our precious time? Why even lift a finger to push the remote?
Obama is now the lamest of ducks. He cried ‘Wolf!’so many times, and made so many sweeping and empty promises he never kept, that his credibility is completely shot. No one except he and his WH groupies believe a thing the TOTUS (Teleprompter of The United States) spews any more. It was once thought to be a message from heaven on how to right the country. Now we know TOTUS is just a bad B-Movie script from the 1950’s being replayed via the POTUS’ lips, with no basis in reality.
So instead of dialing into a bad rerun, now we await the next President of these United States to show up.
Update: Apparently the Washington Post gets it:
With the unemployment rate locked in above 9 percent, voters are weary of words. Another high-profile speech is likely to underscore how little has changed since Obama said in his first joint-session address, a month after taking office, “Now is the time to jump-start job creation.”
“Underscore”? More like “cement”.
I don’t think I will listen to him. I already know what he plans to talk about. His plan isn’t going to solve anything and he’s going to try and implement his plan through fiat.
Lurker, I agree. His plan of attack is to use executive orders to violate the law. If the average citizen broke the law as he does, they would be prosecuted. His job is to see that laws passed by Congress are executed. Yes, he has the authority to issue Executive Orders, but the purpose of those are to handle emergencies and then to follow up to have congress approve them, or not. That’s not his intent.
My time will be better spent and my mind will be much more fulfilled by watching the commercials during the pre-game show than by listening to Obama.
I don’t know, if it’s the Sham-WoW! guy I guess it would be a tie.
hey, I thought of a good metaphor – while Obama is speaking, he should be pumping the Shake-weight. That at least would be sending an honest message!
http://www.hulu.com/watch/143264/saturday-night-live-shake-weight-dvd
If the president gives a speech and nobody tunes in, is he still a tedious, dull-witted empty suit?
OF COURSE!
Pass.the.bill! Pass.the.bill!
UGH!
It might have been a great bill two years ago but after two and a half years of promises…broken, not many believe him anymore.
I watched Frank Luntz interviewing his focus group from Atlanta. Almost all no longer believe in Obama. Most o their reasons were rational and sensible except for those from two black ladies. One of the black ladies claimed that Obama could not get anything done because the House GOP is blocking them. The other one claims that Obama never got the support since day 1.
The rest o the group immediately corrected these two black ladies. For one, Obama did have support in the first two years because he had full Democratic house. Secondly, the tea party did not exist until 2010 and came into existence because of Obama’s policies.
But when these two black ladies were asked if they believe in Obama now, they both said, “Somewhat…not much anymore.”
Obama is destined to lose next year. There are calls for his resignation (would create a definite mental certainty needed in the small business world) and impeachment.
Problem is that Biden would take Obama’s place. Would Biden be any better than Obama? Well, there’s only a few more months left….so who would enter the democratic race?
So call for Biden’s resignation, then John Boehner would become our President. Is that a good thing? I don’t think so because then he still has the Senate Democratic majority.
Well I would say the speech lived up to the lowered expectations and exceeded them by being even lower than I could have imagined.
Time after time the community rabble rouser ordered the congress and more specifically those who were not standing and clapping foolishly, hysterically and insanely, to pass his plan.
The Lyin kING HAS NO PLAN! As DeMint said way before the speech give a us a plan on paper we and the American people can see.
We have gone from campaign 2008 when plans were to be posted on the internet for 5 days in advance, negotiations hammered out on cspan, lobbyists and wallstreet fatcats sittin in the back to reality 2011 where no plans exist.
There are just platitudes and ad hominem attacks against a mythical foe, bills negotiated in advance with Trumpka (head of the labor unions) and Jeffrey Immelt GE (whose company took all kinds of green taxbreaks thus owed no taxes on record profits and promptly built two plants overseas) and then those bills forced through a brain dead Rat run congress in the dark of night preferably on the weekend by one party rule.
Thank God for the Tea Party who are terrorists, Hobbits, racists, and worse for putting just enough congress critters in place to overcome the Rat Party and more than too many spineless, old, fossilized weasels in the Republican ranks who have reached across the isle long enough to almost doom our country.
Sarah is right crony capitalism exists and is not the domain of one party but is the lifeblood of the two party DC elites who take our money to give to their favorite players who in turn launder it back to the incumbent office holder thieves.
Throw the bums out! 2012 can’t come soon enough.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/10/us/10iht-currents10.html?_r=4&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1315569719-RpR5AuX40tZqZl8xOiUg7g
FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES!
I was there, she will run and she can win, in a landslide.
http://www.redstate.com/erick/2011/09/09/last-night-president-obama-sewed-the-seeds-of-his-own-destruction/
“It might have been a great bill two years ago”
ummmm… nope.
Oh! I meant…it might have been a great speech two years ago…not a great bill. I used the wrong word.
Listened to Rick Green today.