We are going to take a few days and discuss the track record of the Obama Presidency across several perspectives. The impetus for this discussion and review was the fact that when the world leaders and millions of French men and women rallied in France to protest and take a stand against global Islamic terrorism, this President embarrassed himself and the United States by NOT attending the gathering of world leaders in Paris. In our opinion, this was an epic fail and a missed historical opportunity.
Not only did he not attend, no high ranking member of his administration bothered to make the trip either. While world leaders of over 40 countries attended and high ranking officials of other countries made the trip, the highest ranking U.S. person was just the current French ambassador.
This snub of the French is a tremendous, and possibly historic, missed opportunity. This could have been a defining moment in the Obama Presidency where he rallied the rest of the world in its fight against global terrorism. The whole world was watching but apparently the President was back in the White House, rumored to be watching NFL football games instead of leading in Paris.
If Obama was a true leader, he could have used the commonality of the fight against terrorism to also work on other global issues. The leaders of Israel and the PLO were at the rally with a common, shared goal of fighting terrorism. What a great time in might have been of using that common objective to move onto other problem resolution opportunities.
The Russian Foreign Minister was also at the Paris rally. Why not use the common goal of fighting terrorism to talk about the Ukraine and other troubling Russian and U.S. issues? But the President missed this historic window of leveraging this common objective across most of the world.
But missed opportunities seems to be the theme of this President. Whenever an opportunity to be bold, productive, epic, and a leader arose, this President, and the administration he has put in place, has usually failed and failed miserably. Bad economic policies, divisive race politics, a failing health care reform law, a clumsy foreign affairs management history, bad management processes as a Federal government bureaucracy teeters on the edge of total incompetence, etc., this administration has not been able to get out of its own way to attain any problem resolution at all.
Given that we are comfortable calling his absence in Paris an epic fail, we are going to take a few days and see if there are other epic fails that this administration has attained. We will discuss the policies track records of this Presidency over the next few days according to the following general topics and see if the failure as epic as his absence in Paris has been repeated in other areas of governance:
Not only did he not attend, no high ranking member of his administration bothered to make the trip either. While world leaders of over 40 countries attended and high ranking officials of other countries made the trip, the highest ranking U.S. person was just the current French ambassador.
This snub of the French is a tremendous, and possibly historic, missed opportunity. This could have been a defining moment in the Obama Presidency where he rallied the rest of the world in its fight against global terrorism. The whole world was watching but apparently the President was back in the White House, rumored to be watching NFL football games instead of leading in Paris.
If Obama was a true leader, he could have used the commonality of the fight against terrorism to also work on other global issues. The leaders of Israel and the PLO were at the rally with a common, shared goal of fighting terrorism. What a great time in might have been of using that common objective to move onto other problem resolution opportunities.
The Russian Foreign Minister was also at the Paris rally. Why not use the common goal of fighting terrorism to talk about the Ukraine and other troubling Russian and U.S. issues? But the President missed this historic window of leveraging this common objective across most of the world.
But missed opportunities seems to be the theme of this President. Whenever an opportunity to be bold, productive, epic, and a leader arose, this President, and the administration he has put in place, has usually failed and failed miserably. Bad economic policies, divisive race politics, a failing health care reform law, a clumsy foreign affairs management history, bad management processes as a Federal government bureaucracy teeters on the edge of total incompetence, etc., this administration has not been able to get out of its own way to attain any problem resolution at all.
Given that we are comfortable calling his absence in Paris an epic fail, we are going to take a few days and see if there are other epic fails that this administration has attained. We will discuss the policies track records of this Presidency over the next few days according to the following general topics and see if the failure as epic as his absence in Paris has been repeated in other areas of governance:
- Transparency and integrity
- Economic policy
- Foreign policy
- Healthcare policy
- Government management policy
Government Management Policy
I believe most politicians have such big egos that they are always looking for the legacy opportunities while neglecting the daily, hum drum operation of government. I am pretty sure LBJ is prouder of the civil rights bills that he helped get passed than making sure that Social Security checks went out on time. I am pretty sure that Nixon is prouder of his opening up relations with China than making sure that taxes got collected on time by the IRS.
This President is no different. Given the many epic failures of his administration that we have reviewed overt the past week or so, it is not surprising that he is now reaching, or over reaching, for any kind of positive legacy:
- Obama Care is turning out to be a disaster but he does not want to even adjust it via some common sense changes lest it be viewed as a failure.
- Dodd-Frank was passed years ago but it cannot be considered a positive legacy since much of the rules and regulations to support it have not even been written yet by the Obama administration.
- He is willing to bypass Congress and violate the Constitution by trying to unilaterally enact immigration rules and laws by himself.
- He wants to make community college free for those interested even though the merits of such an expensive boondoggle are few, if any.
As a result of feeding his ego and desperately trying to go down into history, Obama, like most of his predecessors, has neglected to effectively and efficiently operate even the most basic government functions. However, if you go down the list of government dysfunction under his administration, it seems that it is even worse than the dysfunction of those that came before him.
On top of this dysfunction, he cannot even claim that government is failing to provide even basic services because of budget cuts. The Federal government under his leadership has collected more taxes, spent more money, and had bigger budget deficits than any Presidency before his, which makes the following epic fails in government management even more despicable:
- Medicare, Medicaid and a handful of over Federal government welfare programs still lose over $100 billion a year to incompetence, wasteful spending, and criminal fraud.
- Social Security still loses over $100 billion a year to incompetence, wasteful spending, and criminal fraud.
- The IRS admits that it fails to collect well over $400 billion taxes from tax evaders but somehow finds the time and resources to suppress the First Amendment rights of huge numbers of American citizens.
- The Defense Department is so screwed up that professional auditors have actually given up trying to figure out the Department's financial and accounting dealings and misdealings, a situation that probably wastes tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars every year.
- Despite spending well over two hundred billion dollars via the Department of Education during his Presidency, our failing public school education processes are no better now than when Obama took office.
- Despite spending well over a hundred billion dollars via the Department of Energy during his Presidency, the nation still has no strategic and effective energy plan despite spending billions of dollars on a string of failed energy companies and projects with no societal benefit in return.
- The country via the Federal government still has no coordinated plan to attack the major health crisis and problems of our time, problems and crisis that continually drive up the cost of medical care and medical insurance int his country.
- The Federal government continued to hand out huge bonus checks to upper level executives and managers in the Veterans Administration even though thousands and thousands of veterans were not getting the medical care they were promised and what they well deserved, with some of them dying while waiting for proper and delayed treatment.
- Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are quickly approaching the edge of fiscal insolvency but six years into this Presidency, the President has no plan on how to fix any for these programs in a cost effective and quality effective manner.
- The current national debt, while receding from the astronomical growth rates of the first four years of the Obama Presidency, will start rising drastically again very shortly due to the budget trajectory this Presidency has set the country on.
- Despite spending over a billion dollars and having a three year head start, this administration could not put together a relatively simple website process for Obama Care.
- Even worse than not be able to build the Obama Care website process, this administration proceeded with the rollout of the website despite knowing that it would fail almost immediately.
- Despite spending well over two hundred billion since the beginning of his administration, Obama's Department of Homeland Security has not been able to stop multiple terrorist attacks within the country (e.g. Boston Marathon bombing, Fort Hood shootings, underwear bomber, Times Square bomber, etc.), has not been able to secure our southern border, and has even done a horrible job protecting the White House with White House windows having been shot out, an intruder forcing his way deep inside of the building, and German tourists strolling into restricted areas before being stopped.
- This President has overseen the massive spying and data collection of information on the communications habits and content of just about every American, in clear violation of the Fourth Amendment, with little societal benefit to show for the violations.
- Despite failing America in delivering even basic services in a cost effective and quality manner, this administration continued to waste millions and millions of taxpayer dollars on such stupid projects as funding a study to determine when dogs became man's best friend, building a video game to simulate prom week, funding pottery classes in Morocco, and other such nonsense that affects virtually nobody in America except for those that receive the money to carry out such inane projects.
Yes, everyone wants to hit a home run, in baseball, in life and in the Presidency. But if you cannot hit singles and get on base, then the home runs are usually not very important.
If you cannot operate basic government functions, then who cares whether or not you got free community college tuition for a small handful of people. The rest of America is seeing their tax dollars being spent in a haphazard and ineffective manner, whether it is endangering their retirement revenue stream and medical care, allowing tax cheaters to get away without paying their fair share, denying veterans the medial care they need, etc.
If you cannot do basic government functions, if you allowed government to turn into Jabba the Hutt, the obese, disgusting, and resource consuming monster of Star Wars, then you are an epic fail when it comes to providing efficient and effective government services for hard earned taxpayer dollars.
That will do it for this series which examined the performance of the Obama administration along five different dimensions. Unfortunately for the country, this Presidency has been an epic failure along every single one of those five dimensions. By the time he leaves office, we will have wasted eight years of not resolving any major issue of our times, not streamlining government to make it more effective, not having any credibility in foreign affairs, and added more than eight trillion dollars to our national debt. Epic fail.
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:
www.loathemygovernment.com
It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
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