One of the more disturbing elements of each of the most recent “major policy speeches” President Barack Obama has given have been his overt attacks on the opposition party. In his speech about the budget, to which he invited Rep. Paul Ryan (Wisc.), the Republican House Budget Committee Chairman, he vilified Ryan’s budget proposal as “un-American.”
Last week in Texas, there to court the Hispanic vote, Obama again attacked the GOP while trumpeting his immigration policy – about which, nothing has been accomplished.
Some tend to write it off as his tendency to be more comfortable campaigning than governing. And given the governance his administration has practiced these past two-plus years, one can see why.
But the real reason – or perhaps the most probable reason – that Obama perpetually attacks the GOP is because otherwise he’d have to talk about his own record. He’d prefer to try and divert the public’s anger to the other team than try to defend his administration.
Frank Donatelli, in a piece at POLITICO, tells us that defending his record is just not conducive to re-election. Donatelli cites four reasons for that:
One: Gas prices are at the four dollar level and may remain there for some time. While Obama and the Democrats desperately try to shift the blame to “Big Oil”, most people aren’t buying it. And anyone who has ever even had a passing acquaintance with Econ 101 realizes that removing tax breaks from oil companies won’t make oil less costly. It will in fact make it more expensive.
Obama has belatedly okayed speeding up drilling in Alaska and possibly along the coasts. But even with the most expeditious approval of such drilling, it is unlikely to have any impact on oil prices before 2012. Many political observers see this as an attempt to be able to say he’s doing something about exploiting our massive resources for the campaign.
Two: Unemployment is at nine percent. And, given the anti-business policies of this administration, such as the attacks on the oil companies and the NLRB attack on Boeing, businesses are not convinced that it is worth hiring or expanding in such a hostile atmosphere. Unless the unemployment level comes down significantly before November of 2012, it spells problems for the Obama team.
Three: The debt. By the end of a second Obama term, his administration would be responsible for adding $10 trillion to the total. Obama’s position?
He believes the public is so insistent on maintaining entitlement programs that began in the 1930s and 1960s, and remain unchanged, that people will overlook this systematic looting of our children’s future.
Four: Three wars. Obama’s only real success in the foreign policy arena has been his call to kill bin Laden. But he’s also essentially followed the Bush plan and timeline for Iraq, broadened the Afghan war and gotten us involved in a third conflict without any consultation with Congress and no strategy for ending it. Mr. Obama once claimed he wasn’t opposed to all war, just dumb wars. Libya is about as dumb a war as one can imagine. And he will have to answer for it at some point.
Once you peruse the litany of his “accomplishments” and the devastating effect even the discussion of one of them would have – much less all four – on the perception of his ability to lead and govern, you can begin to understand why he seems so insistent on changing the subject to Republicans.
