Don't take my word for it; he's admitted it on the campaign stump.
In a speech to his fellow cultural icons in Hollywood, he said, "Everything we fought for in 2008 is on the line here in 2012. And I need your help to finish what we started. ... We've come too far to turn back now."
Note that Obama did not say this: "My agenda obviously isn't working, so I have decided to make major adjustments. Rest assured that my wholesale failure to get the economy moving again, to create jobs, to reform entitlements and to reduce deficits and debts will not be repeated in a second term.
"I will quit misleading the public with the absurd claim that 7.8 percent unemployment is encouraging, especially when so many have quit looking for work and many who are working have only part-time jobs. I'll stop insisting that I have proposed cutting $4 trillion from spending, when the lion's share of those "cuts" were either forced by Republicans or not scheduled expenditures (on the wars) in the first place. Truth be told, my most recent 10-year budget projects annual average budget deficits of almost $1 trillion -- $9.5 trillion over the next decade. Nor will I throw away hundreds of billions on ill-conceived stimulus plans and green energy boondoggles. I'll also quit making meaningless, unintelligible statements like, 'I will grow the economy from the middle out.'
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"I'll quit punishing and bad-mouthing American businesses and entrepreneurs, calling them soft and lazy and accusing them of not building their businesses. I'll finally allow the private sector to breathe. I'll discontinue my empty talk about expanding opportunity until I prove I'm serious about pushing individual responsibility instead of expanding the dependency class. I'll never again accuse the U.S. Chamber of Commerce of taking foreign money and demanding it prove otherwise when I have absolutely no proof it occurred. I'll quit waging war on the coal, natural gas and oil industries. I'll stop taking credit for growing domestic oil production, as any increases have occurred on private, not public, lands. I'll get out of bed with labor unions, Occupy Wall Street and ACORN at the expense of business, producers and the democratic processes. And I'll quit scaring seniors at the expense of future generations.
"I'll quit apologizing for America, groveling to dictators and mistreating our allies, especially Israel, and I'll stop this insane gutting of our military. I'll cease the class, race and gender warfare; sorry about that. I'll quit dishonoring the conscience rights of health care providers. Recognizing that health care costs are soaring and that tens of millions are still falling through the cracks under Obamacare, I will finally defer to the will of the people by repealing Obamacare and implementing market reforms. At long last, I will fulfill my cynical promise to be transparent; I'll quit carefully scripting my news conferences and evading questions, lest the public continue with the false impression that I am actually on top of current events and can answer tough questions off the cuff.
"I will fight my admitted propensity to be intellectually lazy and to avoid the unglamorous aspects of my job to pursue my passions of campaigning and community organizing. This means I'll delegate less to bogus blue-ribbon commissions formed to give me political cover to avoid commitments I have no intention of honoring, such as deficit reduction. It also means I'll start attending national security briefings, play less golf and cut back on extravagant taxpayer-funded vacations.
"I'll rein in my hyper-politicized Justice Department and make sure it begins honoring the Second Amendment, stops shaking down banks and discontinues its crusade to administer justice in a race-conscious manner. I'll quit bragging about killing Osama bin Laden and implying that his elimination spells the end of our war on terror, especially after the recent attacks in Egypt and Libya. I'll man up and admit these attacks were preplanned, not the result of a controversial video, and that we failed to take precautions to protect our embassies. I'll also stop blaming President Bush for my failures and accept responsibility for my actions as any mature adult would do."
Sadly, you'll never hear anything like this, because Obama is psychologically incapable of admitting his mistakes and ideologically bound to repeat them. He still evidences no concern over our crushing national debt and our declining military power and influence in the world, and he gives no indication that he has any confidence in the private sector to rebound on its own, despite presiding over the worst economic recovery and longest periods of high unemployment in 50 years.
If Obama is re-elected, he'll finish the job he started, all right. Bank on it.
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