OPINION

Obama Says He Deserves a Second Term; Let's Consider

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President Obama told NBC's Matt Lauer in an interview Sunday, "I deserve a second term." Well, let's see.

He had the courage to tell the Supreme Court off for daring to defy him in its campaign finance law ruling. And he did it during his State of the Union speech, when they weren't in a position to object, showing just what a marvelous tactician he is.

He was not about to be stymied by an obstructionist Republican House that didn't buy into his Euro-fashionable idea that we're all going to die from catastrophic man-made global warming. So when those knuckleheads wouldn't pass cap and trade, his Environmental Protection Agency lawlessly imposed its own emission standards. He showed those Republicans.

He was sick and tired of our being in Iraq, an action approved by a joint resolution of Congress, so he telegraphed a date certain to withdraw. But he wasn't going to let Republicans think he couldn't flex his own muscles in the nominal cause of freedom, so he one-upped those dolts again by intervening in Libya without consulting Congress at all, much less getting its approval.

When he crammed through Obamacare against the people's will, he adroitly claimed he was acting on our behalf. Every year he's been in office, his deficits have greatly exceeded $1 trillion, and he is on course to double the national debt in five years and triple it in 10. How many presidents could pull that off?

Though he has driven us to within a molecule's width of national bankruptcy and achieved -- like none of his inferior predecessors -- a downgrading of our national credit rating, he deftly managed to deflect the blame for this on Republican opposition to his wholly reckless budget plan. Not too shabby.

His Democratic-controlled Senate has failed to pass a budget in more than 1,000 days, and he has declined to exercise leadership on this but somehow managed to shift equal blame to Republicans for their inaction. Then again, what do you expect from a man who can straight-facedly blame his predecessor for his own policy failures three years hence?

He's convinced many that Republicans' only driving force is to protect unfair tax advantages for the wealthy when in fact these "wealthy" pay significantly more than middle- and lower-income earners and pay a higher rate, as well. It's not just any old Joe who without any experience can ride a perfect economic storm into the presidency and convince people against all the evidence, common sense and reason that Warren Buffett is paying a lower income tax rate than America's secretaries. That takes skills.

How many presidents have you known who could pass policies to exacerbate our national debt crisis, refuse even to negotiate on entitlement reform, mischaracterize Rep. Paul Ryan's budget plan as robbing seniors of their Medicare benefits, form a bipartisan deficit commission and ignore its findings, and implement an $868 billion wasteful, corrupt stimulus bill with phantom ZIP codes and no shovel-ready jobs that he promised yet boldly insist on more "stimulus" spending?

How about Obama's ingenious exploitation of the Gulf oil spill to impose a Draconian drilling moratorium on the evil oil industry while encouraging drilling in Cuba and Brazil and his brilliant end run around a federal district judge and an appellate court by lawlessly rewriting the rule? Or his public relations coup in announcing the end of the moratorium while silently imposing a de facto moratorium through onerous rules for drilling permits, all while fibbing that he has opened more land for drilling than an Arab sheik? This, my friends, is no lightweight we're dealing with here.

Some of you barbershop political quarterbacks might think you are savvy, but how many of you could have marshaled the requisite executive prowess to prevent a major corporation from relocating one of its plants to another state to help your union friends and simultaneously claim you were acting in the national interest? Or how about killing the Keystone XL pipeline project -- with all the jobs and economic activity it would have generated -- while holding yourself out as focused on job creation? Or incinerating $535 million in Solyndra despite being warned it wouldn't work and then bragging about your courage in forging ahead with other such projects? Could you have committed homicide on the coal, oil and natural gas industries while insisting you were pursuing all options? I didn't think so.

Are you sharp enough to accuse the Chamber of Commerce of taking foreign contributions and, when called upon to prove it, masterfully claiming it is up to the chamber to prove a negative? Have you ever taken separate taxpayer jets on vacation for you, your wife and your dog while contemporaneously savaging the private jet industry?

Some of you still won't get it, probably because, like most Americans, you have "become too soft and lost (your) competitive edge." If you don't have the sense to re-elect Obama, that's your own -- I mean Bush's -- fault.