THE O BOMB: WHY IS OBAMA DOING SO BADLY?

Sam Smith
 

- His supporters didn't read the small type above the box marked "I accept." If they had they would have learned during the campaign that Obama was pro-military, anti-civil liberties and conservative on economics. They got what they paid for, just not what they thought they had paid for.

- Obama got where he is by repeatedly pleasing the establishment. He still is.

- Everyone from his mother to his law professors to the Democratic Leadership Council kept telling him how great he was. He came to believe them. Wisdom and judgment in life requires losses as well as victories.

- He understands how to created transparent data but not how to create visible programs.  No one knows why we're in Afghanistan, what's really in the healthcare bill, or what's being stimulated in their communities. It's hard to argue for things people can't see and it makes it easy for your opponents to claim that they're something awful. The best politics is the sort you can see and feel.

- Obama's a lawyer surrounded by too many lawyers. The legalocracy has been taking over Washington for years, but with Obama it's reached a new peak. Lawyers do somethings well, like write contracts, sue people and draft your will. In other matters - like actually doing whatever it is they're providing legal support for - they are not particularly qualified. Harry Markopolos, the Bernie Madoff whistleblower, recently described how it works at the SEC:"The five commissioners of the SEC are securities lawyers. Securities lawyers never understand finance. They don't have the math background. If you can't do math and if you can't take apart the investment products of the 21st century backward and forward and put them together in your sleep you'll never find the frauds on Wall Street."

- Further, lawyers think truth lies in documents and not out on the street. Which is one reason FDR did better with his stimulus package: he put a social worker, and not a lawyer, in charge.

- Rahm Emmanuel. Hope and change don't go over so well when they are accompanied by threats.  

- As soon as Obama got elected he dumped his liberal supporters, thereby ignoring the advice of a wiser Chicago politician, Richard Daley the elder: "Dance with the one that brung you."

- He has too many economists. Multi-factor crises are not handled well by one-factor thinkers.

- Obama thinks bipartisanship is great. A better politician, Harry Truman, said that when anyone told him they were bipartisan, he knew they were going to vote against him. My Coast Guard navigation instructor told us that if you take a navigational fix and it puts you on one side of a rock and then you take another fix and it puts you on the other side of the rock, "Don't split the difference." Obama doesn't seem to grasp this principle.

- There's nothing intrinsically wrong with compromise, but wise  compromises are made by those who know where they want to go. Using a compromise as the starting point is a premeditated act of random, like you know, whatever.

- Looking deeply pensive when someone else is speaking or doing a little jog up to the podium is cute the first few times; after that it becomes corny.

- Obama's problem is not that he uses a teleprompter but that he seems totally dependent on it, such as using one when speaking to a group of school children. Joe Biden should give him lessons in human conversation.

- Academic intelligence takes you only so far. At some point, you have to apply it and that requires other skills such as social wisdom, empathy and judgment.

- Obama, who has a hard time running those governmental functions covered by the Constitution, can't keep his hands off things that are none of his business like local education or how health records are maintained. The wisest leaders know how to share power with others and to respect the 10th Amendment.

- People don't want more laws and regulations; they want more money, help and happiness. Obama doesn't seem to understand this.

- Everyone talks about Obama and race, but it's really class that's causing the problem. People feel they're being talked down to, scolded, and told what to do by people who come across as intellectual snobs. This didn't used to be a problem, because liberals were the ones who helped the workers and the less fortunate in society. Now they don't seem to care all that much. If liberals, beginning with Obama, had a people-friendly economic policy, the right wouldn't be able to get away with their hypocritical blarney and the Democrats would have some weapons to combat it.

- With Obama as with the rest of his party, there is no interest, concern or respect for the local - where people really live. Getting through life doesn't happen at a White House summit but in the 'hood.

- After you've had all your summits and your speeches and special meetings with special people, it helps to make a decision or two that everyone can understand and a lot of people can get excited about.