We knew before he was elected that Barack Obama was the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate.
We knew that for 20 years he listened to the anti-white, anti-capitalist ravings of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. and considered him his mentor.
We knew that beyond getting some of the asbestos removed from one public housing project in Chicago, he had never actually accomplished anything beyond getting himself elected.
It therefore should not have come as a surprise that Obama’s policies have been neither effective nor popular with a country that leans to the right of center. But what has remained a mystery is why Obama has not changed course now that it’s become apparent that his presidency is failing and that he likely will be a one-term president.
The answer became clear last week when Obama called for patience in judging his policies. He compared what he is trying to do to freeing the slaves.
“In every instance, progress took time,” Obama said. “You know, the slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs, they weren’t sure when slavery would end, but they understood it was going to end.”
In his remarks on leaving the White House as chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel echoed that theme. He called Obama “the toughest leader any country could ask for in the toughest time any president has ever faced.”
These delusions of grandeur are so divorced from reality that even the most committed Democrats have to consider them silly. No one would compare Obama and the issues he has faced to those tackled by George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, or George W. Bush.
Obama’s comments and those of his closest adviser are symptoms of White House-itis. As described in my book “In the President’s Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect,” this is a malady of arrogance that presidents and their aides often contract.
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Rather than accomplishing anything approaching what our greatest presidents have achieved, Obama has tripled the deficit and increased the national debt by $3.2 trillion. He has barely made a dent in the unemployment rate. Instead, he has created an anti-business climate that makes companies hesitant to hire new workers.
Through his apologies to the world and temporizing about the war on terror, he has weakened America. By sending more troops while imposing a deadline for beginning to withdraw from Afghanistan, he has sent soldiers into battle with their hands tied behind their backs.
Already because of Obama’s healthcare legislation, health insurance companies are raising their rates and canceling coverage. Citing the new law, the Principal Financial Group announced it will stop selling health insurance to 840,000 people who are now covered.
As Obama has moved to spend more taxpayer dollars and hire more government employees, European countries are moving in the opposite direction. Even Cuba is letting go 500,000 state employees and transferring them to private sector jobs because it says it can no longer sustain “bloated payrolls and losses that hurt the economy.”
In his book “Dreams from My Father,” Obama admitted that after three years of working as a community organizer, his only accomplishment was getting asbestos removed from some of the pipes at the Algeld Gardens housing project in Chicago. But he wrote that when classmates asked him what he had done, he diverted their attention by pronouncing on “the need for change” in the country.
That slogan got him elected, and now he is cynically trotting it out again to cover up his failures. Despite those failures, he remains committed to a left-wing agenda, oblivious to the evidence all around him that those policies are hurting the country.
Now we know why: Obama and his aides really believe he is the anointed one.
Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com. View his previous reports and get his dispatches sent to you free via e-mail. Go here now.
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