President Obama reaches his 100th day in the White House Wednesday, so the liberal press is about to burst with flowery tributes to multiple milestones – some real, most imagined – of this most radical American chief executive ever. Contrary to the plaudits flowing from America’s left-leaning journalists this week, The Examiner must dissent by noting three of Obama “achievements” that likely mark his administration as a disaster in the making.
First, there is national security. Obama’s demotion of the War on Terror to “overseas contingency operations” points to a series of presidential decisions that eventually will cost many American lives. Most egregious was last week’s irresponsible and manifestly deceitful release of formerly classified documents describing “enhanced interrogation techniques” – water-boarding, sleep deprivation, confinement in close quarters, etc. – used by the U.S. in the wake of 9/11. Obama’s decision was irresponsible because it handed a priceless recruiting tool to al Qaeda and other radical Muslim groups. They will surely use this gift from Obama to find and train many more jihadist fanatics in the mass murder of Americans here and around the globe. This decision was deceitful because Obama also sought to conceal the full truth on the issue, most especially that thousands of Californians are alive today because the “second wave” of deadly attacks using commercial airliners was prevented as a result of information gleaned from multiple water-boardings of the master-mind of 9/11.
Second, despite his 2008 campaign promise of a “net spending reduction,” Obama has instead embarked on what Ron Robinson of the conservative Young America’s Foundation aptly describes as “government spending on a scale unprecedented in human history.” The 2009 deficit is projected to be nearly $2 trillion, which virtually equals all federal spending in Bill Clinton’s final year in the White House. Worse, Obama’s red ink will flow freely for the foreseeable future. The inevitable result will be economic stagnation, double digit unemployment, and hyper-inflation rivaling that seen during Germany’s Weimar Republic.
Finally, there is the matter of public trust. Obama was elected as a different kind of candidate who could be trusted to deliver genuine change. But virtually every one of his 99 days in the nation’s highest office have revealed him to be just another Washington pol who talks a good case but acts no differently when it comes to keeping promises. Elsewhere in today’s Examiner, our Byron York discusses how Obama’s personal popularity contrasts with growing dissatisfaction with his policies. As most of Obama’s recent predecessors in the Oval Office can attest, such a divergence is bad news indeed.
