Are they agendas for the betterment of America? Or are they agendas for the betterment of the rest of the world?
I’m referring to President Obama’s policy agendas. Despite how much he reasserts that we “must” embrace this or that policy simply because it is “the right thing to do,” it’s becoming increasingly difficult to claim that Obama’s stated plans and intentions advance any sense of American wellbeing.
In this regard, Rush Limbaugh recently articulated what many of us have been thinking on this subject (as he often does). Noting last week that he began this year saying that he hopes Obama fails, Rush went on to say “I’m actually wondering…I’m asking myself…is it maybe that Obama wants America to fail, so he can rebuild it and remake it?”
That’s a legitimate question. With as much as Barack Obama has sought to “change” America, it’s fair to ask “so what’s the real intention here?” Nobody can truly know his internal thoughts and ambitions. But we, the people, can scrutinize the policy agendas. We need to be doing this on an on-going basis.
On the economic front, President Obama repeatedly reminds Americans of the hardship that he faces having “inherited” a $1.3 trillion deficit from the former President. Yet he spent more than half that amount with the so-called “stimulus” bill during his first six weeks as President, and then went on to implement a federal budget that spent about $3.6 trillion more.
Now, of course, he is seeking a government take-over of the medical profession and the healthcare industry. He insists that his approach will provide universal, top-quality health care for every American without imposing health-care rationing, without raising taxes on the middle class, and without adding anything to the national deficit. He has even insisted that nationalizing healthcare is necessary for the nation’s economic health. Yet he has not demonstrated how government will provide a greater quantity of a better quality healthcare service to a greater number of consumers at a lower price. He won’t demonstrate that, because he cannot demonstrate that. It is economic non-reality.
Yet he insists that he is “right.”
On the foreign policy front, it is also difficult to argue that the President is advancing the interests of the United States. Obama campaigned on a promise to repair relationships between the U.S. and the rest of the world, relationships that he claimed President Bush had so horribly damaged. Yet on his economic proposals, alone, foreign governments are reacting with shock and horror to our new President.
China, the largest holder of U.S. federal debt, has repeatedly expressed concern over America’s growing inability to pay its bills, and has suggested that it may be time to switch to a new global currency, and to abandon the American dollar. And Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, addressing the European Union last Spring, described Obama’s approach to the current economic crisis as “a way to hell” and predicted bad things for America’s economic future (could it be that this man who once lived under Communist rule knows something about the problems of ‘big government?”).
Now President Obama has successfully alienated a good bit of Europe, especially the Czech Republic and Poland, by capitulating to Russia’s desires and abandoning a Western European missile shield program. The Obama Administration insists that a different approach to shielding the European nations from potential threats is a “smarter” way to go, and is also betting on Russia responding in-kind with assistance in containing the growing threat of Iran.
Yet the Administration seems tone-deaf on how these latest moves compromise one of the most important strategic relationships that the U.S. has ever known – the supportive transatlantic relationship between our country, and a free Europe. It’s as though the current President of the United States doesn’t understand that Europe fears the resurgence of a dictatorial, thuggish Russia, about as much as we fret over a nuclear Iran.
On these two fronts alone (economic and foreign policy), it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that President Obama is “strengthening” the United States. Even congressional Democrats are finding it difficult to embrace Obama-styled “change” (hence, his inability to unite his party around nationalized healthcare).
So if Barack Obama is not strengthening America with his execution of the office of President of the United States, what is he doing? Is America remaining in a generally static, “neutral” condition under President Obama’s leadership, or is it being weakened?
I raised this question here in this column last spring. At that time I was treated to outrage, shock, and horror from readers who couldn’t believe that I would even contemplate such a terrible thought about any U.S. President (and, of course, I received the obligatory “racist” accusations as well). Now, nearly nine months into the Obama presidency, the question is begging to be revisited.
It’s no mystery that some liberal Americans believe the U.S. has risen to worldwide prominence by ill-gotten means, and that other countries suffer because we succeed.
Is President Obama one of those liberals?