We saw it over and over with Obamacare. By now, it's part of our national lore that he delivered some 54 speeches to sell the public on his scheme yet never made a dent in the public approval numbers. Truth be told, in the end he gave far more than 54.
But that didn't stop him from pressing forward anyway, and his underhanded methods at cramming his bill through Congress will also be enshrined in our national history.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't he done the same thing with automobile emission standards and other environmental causes? He couldn't convince the people that he was right, nor could he convince Congress, so he just colluded with his fellow radical autocrats in the Environmental Protection Agency to bypass Congress and impose these regulations unilaterally.
Let's also not forget his pet project, the sainted high-speed rail, for which he's determined to spend billions and billions of dollars in brazen defiance of the people's disinterest in the project, their objection to further deficit spending, and the marked resistance of the individual states.
Obama demands we embrace his misguided fantasy, even though several state governors have essentially said: "Thanks, but no thanks. We can't afford your federal generosity. We're the ones who'll have to maintain the albatrosses." Congress has also pronounced it dead on arrival.
But Obama won't give up. He never gives up. Because he knows better than we do. He tells us this technology is the wave of the future, but it's actually closer to an anachronism. As others have written, it's not well-suited for the territorially expansive United States. But that doesn't matter a whit to him, because his real motive is to coerce us out of our automobiles. If he had his way, he'd mandate interstate bike paths.
Need more proof? Look at Solyndra. Have you heard any apologies from this administration about the colossal waste of federal money in pursuit of an environmental goal that Obama -- not the public -- is demanding? Obama is completely unfazed -- so unfazed that he's just allocated billions more to similarly reckless pipe dreams. He won the election, after all.
We could go on all day with this exercise, but I'll conclude with reference to his so-called jobs bill, which is just as inappropriately named as his "stimulus" package. He's never apologized for the immoral waste of $868 billion, which was wholly his baby. Even if the buck for every subordinate's misstep doesn't stop on the president's desk, this one has his name permanently affixed to it.
It was a disaster in every respect. Whether you measure it against Obama's promises for it or don't even consider those, it was a miserable failure. He didn't say he was sorry for adding so much more to the debt without creating the guaranteed jobs; he didn't say he'd learned from his mistakes. He mocked us, in effect, for trusting him, with his cavalier, disingenuous claim that there were an unlimited number of shovel-ready jobs.
The man is incapable of putting his tail between his legs. If I hadn't witnessed it, I honestly wouldn't have believed he had come back for more with the jobs bill. He doesn't trifle himself to give us any reason that the bastard son of Stimulus would be any different from its licentious father. He just stands at his podium, with his head raised and his tone haughty, and tells us that spending a half-trillion more Monopoly money is the only solution for getting the economy moving.
Seriously? You have to be kidding me. But he's not.
And when Congress rejected this offensively ill-conceived project, he flinched not, but redoubled his commitment to force it through -- piece by piece, benevolent dictator that he is.
Obama attributes opposition to his plan to partisanship, suggesting that Republicans only oppose it because they want to hurt him politically. That's right; neither the nearly $15 trillion national debt nor the failed track record of Stimulus Sr. could have anything to do with it. And the prominent Democrats opposing it must be driven by partisanship, as well.
Obama is reduced to banging the table like a toddler, demanding he get his way. The only difference in the analogy is that parents correct their toddlers to keep them from hurting themselves; Obama's opponents oppose him to keep him from further destroying the nation.
America's 36th president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, recognizing his failure to steer the United States through the Vietnam War period, gracefully did not seek re-election.
You can't blame me for dreaming.