To date, Barack Obama’s presidency has been characterized by many things, not the least of which has been a display of arrogance usually reserved for full-blown dictators like Hugo Chavez or crazies like Al Gore. And his personal haughtiness has been more than matched by members of his administration who have followed their fearless leader lockstep down a path of government expansion and economic implosion.
It’s been a slide from the exceptional to the mediocre, throughout which Obama appears to have deemed himself above the law. Thus, when he comes across a law with which he does not agree, he simply ignores it.
Case in point – the Defense of Marriage Act, which the Obama administration abruptly announced they would no longer enforce earlier this year even though it was passed by Congress in 1996 and has been the law of the land ever since.
Or consider another recent circumvention of Congress, whereby the Obama administration unilaterally decided they would no longer deport illegal immigrants en mass, but would review every case on a case by case basis, under the guise of freeing up resources to deport the most violent and dangerous illegal immigrants faster.
But this deportation talk is all a façade, because part of the announcement also contained news that the Obama administration wouldn’t deport illegal immigrants who are “attending school, [have] family in the military or [have] primary [responsibility] for other family members’ care.”
In other words, just because illegal immigration is a crime, that doesn’t mean illegal immigrants are criminals in the Obama lexicon. (After all, those illegal immigrants might be able to vote.)
And consider the myriad of violations – both international and domestic – that were part and parcel to the ATF’s operation “Fast and Furious.” (Included in these violations was the sale of 2,500 weapons to purchasers who were knowingly buying the weapons not for themselves, but for criminals, and the knowledge that those weapons would then be transported illegally across the Mexico/U.S. border, and the subsequent cover-up that continues to this day.)
Now that I think about it, maybe these aren’t examples of being “above the law” as much as they are examples of simple lawlessness, period.
This lawlessness results in the kind of nonsense exemplified last week, when the very DOJ that accused the Bush administration of using law enforcement to violate the civil rights of Americans raided Gibson Guitars over an environmental violation that allegedly took place in India (although Gibson Guitars has paperwork in hand that proves they’ve been operating legally).
The message to Americans is clear: Obama and his administration do what they want, when they want, as they want.
What we need to do is send them a clear message in 2012. One that hands them an electoral loss of such lopsided proportions that “hope and change” becomes a pejorative.