There has always been a level of child-like petulance running through both Barack Obama and his administration. Friends were only tools of convenience, discarded once they were no longer useful. Laws were obeyed so long as they advanced a cause, but were ignored otherwise. The constitution was a useful instrument until it prevented the president from his goals. Bipartisanship was a worthy goal so long as it is was done his way.
When Barack Obama entered office in 2009, after telling his supporters to take guns to knife fights and get in their neighbors faces and yell, he set about ignoring every major issue from immigration reform to gun control to climate change to singularly focus on healthcare.
Republicans were shut out of the process. Barack Obama and the Democrats steamrolled Obamacare through. They lied to get it done. You could keep your doctor if you liked him, until the law passed. Then suddenly the Democrats were willing to admit it was not true. Their yes men in the "fact checking" business declared Republican claims that you would lose your doctor the "lie of the year." Then it turned out Republicans were right.
Nancy Pelosi said the law had to be passed to find out what was in it. They then bullied the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court into finding a creative way to declare the law constitutional. Eight members of the Court disagreed with John Roberts, but the four predictable progressives liked the outcome, so they voted with him.
The voters responded by throwing the Democrats out of power in Congress. The courts, too, rebelled. Barack Obama has seen more 9 to 0 decisions against his administration from the Supreme Court than any in the last fifty years.
Once Barack Obama began feeling restrained, he decided to give up on the constitutional processes and act through fiat. He had, he reminded us, a pen and paper. He could do whatever he wanted. Anyone who stood in his way had to be a racist, bigot or on the wrong side of history.
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Barack Obama and his administration believed their own rhetoric. They believed there was a right and wrong side of an arching history. They intended to be on the correct side labeling all those who opposed their ever advancing progressivism to be wrong.
Only at the end of his tenure, in his last State of the Union address, did Barack Obama acknowledge he had helped contribute to a deterioration in American civic culture. But he did nothing with that acknowledgement. Confession is only good with repentance and there has been none -- just more petulance and arrogance.
Now, as Barack Obama departs office, he is going it alone again. With three weeks before departing, he finally demonstrated for all to see his moral cowardice. For eight years, this administration gave lip service to our special relationship with Israel. That nation remains the only democracy in the Middle East. Its Parliament sees Jews and Arabs alike elected to office, though one would never know it based on media coverage. Its Prime Minister can be swept out of power by a vote of the people, unlike the monarchies and dictators surrounding the nation.
But with three weeks to go before the door of the White House hits him in the rear, President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry collaborated with Palestinians and governments opposed to Israel to allow a resolution of condemnation against Israel through the United Nations.
Obama waited until voters could no longer hold him or his party accountable to betray Israel. John Kerry then declared Israel could either remain Jewish or be a democracy, but not both. Imagine him saying the same to a Muslim country? Neither man, in their high minded rhetoric, would have ever considered doing this if the voters could still hold them accountable. It was cowardice.
Barack Obama leaves the White House with the same arrogance and childlike petulance with which he entered. But now he can watch an incoming President dismantle the crumbling remains of his legacy. The voters, it seems, decided Barack Obama was on the wrong side of history. Good riddance.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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