Why Obama Failed

There was a lot of discussion over, and distortion of, Rush Limbaugh’s statement at the beginning of President Obama’s term that “I hope he fails.”   Fast forward to today and it is hard to find anything that is going right.

The economy is trying to bounce back but is weighted down by so much uncertainty about what Washington is doing, going to do,  and in some cases has already done, (e.g. health care) that it can’t do more than sputter.  Unemployment is still near 10 percent and would be even worse except for those that have given up.   Deficits have risen to heretofore unimaginable heights.   Last year this was explained away as TARP and the various stimulus plans, but this year’s deficit is even larger without them.

With a whole slew of tax increases slated to kick in (the new tax on tanning salons just took effect this month) the economist Arthur Laffer wrote in the Wall Street Journal that a lot of the growth we see now is from economic activity moved forward in an attempt to avoid next year’s tax increases.  Laffer predicts that next year “the train goes off the tracks and we get our worst nightmare of a severe ‘double dip’ recession.”   

Then there is the Obama administration’s handling of the oil spill that makes the Bush administration’s handling of Katrina look to be a model of speed and efficiency.   On the foreign policy front, foreign leaders might like Obama because he bows to them both literally and metaphorically, but we are hardly more respected, nor is the world a safer place.

While major media, his stalwart defenders,  are valiantly attempting to present things in the best light and deflect all criticism, there have even been a few cracks in their ranks.

Everywhere you look things are bad and getting worse.  While finger pointing at Bush remains a major component of Obama speeches, as the months tick by, it becomes less and less effective.  Blame may be of supreme importance in Washington, but in the rest of the country people just want the problems fixed.

So what went wrong?  Hugh Hewitt thinks that it has to do with:  “oiiohh” or “Obama Is In Over His Head.”  There is a lot of truth in that.  One of the things the country is learning from the Obama presidency is that having chief executive experience does in fact matter.  The presidency is more than meetings, breakout sessions, and speeches.   With all the left’s attacks on Sarah Palin, the simple fact is that, as a successful governor, she had more experience than Obama.  Obama was really nothing more than a state senator and community organizer who, because of a botched campaign where his opponent had to drop out, got to the United States Senate.  Once there, he almost immediately began running for president.  His lack of experience is a factor and he does at times seem in over his head. But I think there is a deeper problem.

One of my various jobs while working my way through school was as a bank alarm installer and on one job I was part of a team changing the alarm system of a major Los Angeles bank.  Not only was it a major bank, this was the first time this new alarm system was being installed so things had to go right. But they didn’t.  The new system did not work.

For a couple of days my team leader spent hours on the phone with the engineers trying to get the new system to work, but to no avail. Since we had had to rip out all the old cabling to put in the new alarm, going back the old system was not an option. The bank was getting upset, and the head office pressing us to “just make it work.”

Since the bank alarm was somewhat similar to something I had worked on in the Air Force, I asked my lead if I could take a look at the schematics.  In about two hours I found the problem.  They had been checking, rechecking, and then checking again to make sure they followed the schematics, but the schematics were wrong.   Once we confirmed this with the engineers, we rewired the alarm to the corrected schematics and it worked perfectly.

The problem we had at that bank is similar to Obama’s problem. His schematic of how the country works is wrong.   During the campaign his supporters in the media told us not to pay attention to his past or those around him, but we should have. After all, no one spends twenty years in a church with a pastor like Jeremiah Wright unless there is some agreement there.

Obama’s schematic, or “blueprints” for the country have been formed by his life experience and the elite schools he attended,   influenced by the writing of radicals like Saul Alinsky,  focused by his work as a community organizer, and then seasoned by his friends such Pastor Wright and Bill Ayers, the sixties radical who bombed the Pentagon.   In short, his blueprint for the country is wrong.  The more he tries to “fix” the country using those blueprints, the more he will fail and the worse things will get.

While it is theoretically possible for Obama to realize his blueprint is wrong, even in normal circumstances this is very difficult.  For Obama it is virtually impossible,  for no other reason than that his blueprint is supported and reinforced by many others in his party and in the media.  Psychologically it is much easier for them to simply blame Bush than to confront their own failings.

The only real solution is to stop the bleeding by changing control of at least the House of Representatives in November.  If we add to this control of the Senate, then some minor corrections can be made.  But any real solution will have to wait until 2013 when a new president, one with correct blueprints, can take office.