I was reading a post in Power LIne about the Obama Administrations heavy handed tactics towards it's critics. The article ended with the following line.
"I don't expect Obama to moderate his administration's approach, however. This, it turns out, is who he is."
Previously I have mentioned that prior to the election I had written a series of letters to some in my family with my concerns about then candidate Obama. Reading that line reminded me of a another letter I had written with the somewhat strange title of "Bill Parcells and Barack Obama" which was inspired by a Parcells quote which has morphed into the line "You are what your records says you are" The actual quote is much more astute:
"In professional sports, you are what you are. Whatever you finish, that's what you are. If you're 1-15, you're a 1-15 team. If you're 2-14, you're 2-14, no better, no worse. You can look in the brochure and see that the team is 5-9, but it only lost 6 games by a total of nine points? You follow me? The reason the team is 5-9 is because it wasn't any good in close games. With all these sports p.r. guys, the implication is that the team just ran into some bad luck, really you should have finished 9-5. That isn't the way it is in my mind. If you're 2-14, you're 2-14."
The point I was making at the time was with only a paper thin record of actual accomplishments by Obama it was important to look at his record and more important the record of those with whom he most closely associated himself with. Or as I put it:
That is pretty much true in life also, you are what you are, you are what your record shows you to be. I very much believe in redemption, a person can change and become somebody else, establishing a new record, however this does not remove the old record. Using sports again this would be like what the Tampa Bay Rays did this year. Last year they had the worst record in baseball, this year they had one of the best and won their division and are headed to the World Series. They changed their record, not in the press or through a slick PR campaign, but on the field of play, where it counts, where it matters.
That is life. People are judged and evaluated by their records, or should be. There is this narrative out there about Barack Obama, but there is also a record. A voting record both in the Senate and the Illinois Legislature, a record of his past positions on certain boards he has served on and what he did, a record of what he did as a community organizer and a civil rights lawyer, a record of his college classes at Harvard, Columbia and Oxidental. There is also the record of his associations and political alliances both in and out of government.
As we all know Obama pretty much got a pass on all this during the campaign. Since the press was so enthralled with the narrative of Obama they really did not dig into let alone hound him about his record at all. Most of the country was left with a very glowing narrative of a candidate with a record,if truly exposed to the light of day, would probably not have been elected.
So here we are with a President who is still not held to the scrutiny of a normal politician. But who he is, is becoming more and more apparent. Unlike a candidate shielded by the intensely superficial nature of a campaign, a president must actually do something.The UK Telegraph points this out very well in a column by Tony Harnden:
Essentially, however, Mr Obama won because of his persona – post-racial, healing, cool, articulate and inspirational. In a sense, therefore, his greatest achievement in life is being Barack Obama. Or the campaign version, at least.
Therein lies the problem. While campaigning could centre around soaring rhetoric, governing is altogether messier. It involves tough, unpopular choices and cutting deals with opponents. It requires doing things rather than talking about them, let alone just being.
Mr Obama is showing little appetite for this. Instead of being the commander-in-chief, he is the campaigner-in-chief....
Regardless of the method though, Obama is responsible for the tone of his Administration, or at least somebody is. That tone as everyone is beginning to see is not what was sold to the American people.
He is not the pragmatic post racial, post partisan, uniter that was portrayed to America. He is not the cool collected personality who invites opposing points of view and listens to all sides.
He is showing himself to be what he truly is and what he truly believes. A President, mind you, who does not believe in the greatness of the country he leads but rather sees it through the eyes of Chicago street organizer. His roots are deeply planted into Marxism which is a political philosophy one hundred and eighty degrees opposite of the founding and abiding principles of the America most of US cherish.
His supporters who do not hold these views will ultimately have to make a choice.It does not matter if his supporters are in the media, government or society in general eventually they will have to decide whether they believe the narrative that they bought, or the record which is real. Will they live under the delusion that Obama is somehow what he says rather than what he does.
Like it or not the President of the United States is playing hardball against the very fabric which has bound our country together The Constitution. Worse perhaps is that he plays hardball or in his case street ball, against the one thing that stands above even our founding documents. That which is the foundation of not only those documents but the foundation of a free society. Barack Obama, President Of the United States, disdains the idea of individual freedom when it stands in the way of government control.
Words to the contrary-this,it turns out, is who he is.
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