{"id":502,"date":"2010-07-05T07:59:51","date_gmt":"2010-07-05T12:59:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hushbeck.com\/blog\/?p=502"},"modified":"2010-07-05T07:59:51","modified_gmt":"2010-07-05T12:59:51","slug":"why-obama-failed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hushbeck.com\/blog\/2010\/07\/why-obama-failed\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Obama Failed"},"content":{"rendered":"

There was a lot of discussion over, and distortion of, Rush Limbaugh\u2019s statement at the beginning of President Obama\u2019s term that \u201cI hope he fails.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Fast forward to today and it is hard to find anything that is going right.<\/p>\n

The economy is trying to bounce back but is weighted down by so much uncertainty about what Washington is doing, going to do,\u00a0 and in some cases has already done, (e.g. health care) that it can\u2019t do more than sputter.\u00a0 Unemployment is still near 10 percent and would be even worse except for those that have given up.\u00a0\u00a0 Deficits have risen to heretofore unimaginable heights.\u00a0\u00a0 Last year this was explained away as TARP and the various stimulus plans, but this year\u2019s deficit is even larger without them.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> that a lot of the growth we see now is from economic activity moved forward in an attempt to avoid next year\u2019s tax increases.\u00a0 Laffer predicts that next year \u201cthe train goes off the tracks and we get our worst nightmare of a severe \u2018double dip\u2019 recession.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then there is the Obama administration\u2019s handling of the oil spill that makes the Bush administration\u2019s handling of Katrina look to be a model of speed and efficiency.\u00a0\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

While major media, his stalwart defenders,\u00a0 are valiantly attempting to present things in the best light and deflect all criticism, there have even been a few cracks in their ranks.<\/p>\n

Everywhere you look things are bad and getting worse.\u00a0 While finger pointing at Bush remains a major component of Obama speeches, as the months tick by, it becomes less and less effective.\u00a0 Blame may be of supreme importance in Washington, but in the rest of the country people just want the problems fixed.<\/p>\n

So what went wrong?\u00a0 Hugh Hewitt thinks that it has to do with:\u00a0 \u201coiiohh\u201d or \u201cObama Is In Over His Head.\u201d\u00a0 There is a lot of truth in that.\u00a0 One of the things the country is learning from the Obama presidency is that having chief executive experience does in fact matter.\u00a0 The presidency is more than meetings, breakout sessions, and speeches.\u00a0\u00a0 With all the left\u2019s attacks on Sarah Palin, the simple fact is that, as a successful governor, she had more experience than Obama.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Once there, he almost immediately began running for president.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 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\u2019t.\u00a0 The new system did not work.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cjust make it work.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 In about two hours I found the problem.\u00a0 They had been checking, rechecking, and then checking again to make sure they followed the schematics, but the schematics were wrong.\u00a0\u00a0 Once we confirmed this with the engineers, we rewired the alarm to the corrected schematics and it worked perfectly.<\/p>\n

The problem we had at that bank is similar to Obama\u2019s problem. His schematic of how the country works is wrong.\u00a0\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s schematic, or \u201cblueprints\u201d for the country have been formed by his life experience and the elite schools he attended,\u00a0\u00a0 influenced by the writing of radicals like Saul Alinsky,\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0 In short, his blueprint for the country is wrong.\u00a0 The more he tries to \u201cfix\u201d the country using those blueprints, the more he will fail and the worse things will get.<\/p>\n

While it is theoretically possible for Obama to realize his blueprint is wrong, even in normal circumstances this is very difficult.\u00a0 For Obama it is virtually impossible,\u00a0 for no other reason than that his blueprint is supported and reinforced by many others in his party and in the media.\u00a0 Psychologically it is much easier for them to simply blame Bush than to confront their own failings.<\/p>\n

The only real solution is to stop the bleeding by changing control of at least the House of Representatives in November.\u00a0 If we add to this control of the Senate, then some minor corrections can be made.\u00a0 But any real solution will have to wait until 2013 when a new president, one with correct blueprints, can take office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was a lot of discussion over, and distortion of, Rush Limbaugh\u2019s statement at the beginning of President Obama\u2019s term that \u201cI hope he fails.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,13,36],"tags":[140,177,190,208,645,648,654,711,756,942,1031,1137,1149,1151,1152,1166,1241,1243,1331,1357],"class_list":["post-502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-domestic-policy","category-economy","category-taxes","tag-arthur-laffer","tag-bill-ayers","tag-blueprints","tag-bush","tag-house-of-representatives","tag-hugh-hewitt","tag-i-hope-he-fails","tag-jeremiah-wright","tag-katrina","tag-oiiohh","tag-president-obama","tag-rush-limbaugh","tag-sarah-palin","tag-saul-alinsky","tag-schematic","tag-senate","tag-tarp","tag-tax","tag-unemployment","tag-wall-street-journal"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy Obama Failed - Politics and Religion<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/hushbeck.com\/blog\/2010\/07\/why-obama-failed\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why Obama Failed - Politics and Religion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There was a lot of discussion over, and distortion of, Rush Limbaugh\u2019s statement at the beginning of President Obama\u2019s term that \u201cI hope he fails.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Fast forward to today and it is hard to find anything that is going right. 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