At that time, it was not only his inexperience that I felt made him unqualified for the office of the most powerful person on this planet, but also some aspects of his background that I found suspect. (No, I am not a birther!) Similarly, I felt that it was enlightening when he refused to reveal certain information from his past, including college records and his thesis and was also unconvinced that he had listened to sermons of the Reverend (I use the term loosely) Jeremiah Wright for 20 years, but had never heard antisemitic or anti-American utterances from him.
I have also not been unaffected by the fact that President Obama has not stopped campaigning since taking office and has been significantly less than transparent in his Presidency (although he promised to be the most transparent administration ever), or that he has speechified so much during these past 21 months that I cringe whenever I hear his voice. While it disturbed me that he was less than honest when he spoke about the healthcare monstrosity that he sought to pass (No! Pediatricians do NOT perform tonsillectomies, so they cannot decide to forgo antibiotic treatment of a child’s ear infections in favor of surgery to get more money from the insurance company! And No! A medical doctor who treats a patient’s diabetes cannot earn more money from the insurance companies by performing a foot amputation. SURGEONS perform amputations not internists.), opined that the Boston police acted when he knew few details about what really happened, and gave a ‘shout out’ to someone during the first press conference that he gave after the Fort Hood terrorist attack, that is not the point of this critique.
It may surprise some, but I actually do not have much of an issue with the large number of vacations that President Obama has taken (except for his December 2008 Hawaii vacation that made things a bit difficult for us when we were there). The job is extremely stressful, and downtime is essential for anyone who holds this office. Indeed, a President never has a true vacation. How can he? The country still has to function and the President must always stay in contact and be apprised of everything that is happening in the country.
My critique of the President’s actions involve his attitude (and the attitudes of many of the liberal ‘elites’) towards the American electorate, many of whom voted for him in 2008. This attitude towards the electorate was obvious even during the campaign when Obama noted that:
“You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
In other words, they are religious, racist, xenophobic gun fanatics and that explains their opposition to Democrat principles.
His latest reflections on the electorate include further negative observations about the country that elected him and that he serves.
“Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we’re hardwired not to always think clearly when we’re scared. And the country’s scared.”
So, Americans who do not support Obama’s policies are not opposed to them because they do not believe in them, but because they are too afraid and therefore, intellectually incapable of comprehending that these policies are wise.
This came on the heels of the President’s reasoning that the opposition by the electorate to his massive healthcare overhaul was caused, not by their opposition to his policies, but his failure to sufficiently communicate the positive aspects and rationale of the health care law that he advocated, despite the numerous speeches that he delivered on the subject and the many rallies that he held in support of this legislation. In other words, we are too stupid to see the wisdom of the plan that was so obvious to him and his allies in Congress.
How can Obama tell Hispanic voters in an interview on Univision, that they need to vote to help defeat the ’enemy’? He specifically said to Latino voters:
“We're gonna punish our enemies and we're gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.”
It is not acceptable that the President of the United States thinks that it is appropriate to call a significant part of the citizens of this country the ‘enemy'. He was elected and was sworn in as President of the United States to serve ALL of the citizens and not just the Democrats, or others who think like him. It is further unacceptable that the President has tried to separate Americans on racial, political, ideological and economic lines. It is also very troubling that he cannot accept that the electorate can hold opinions different from his and still be intelligent. (He subsequently admitted that it was a mistake to use the word "enemy' and admitted that he should have used the word 'opponent').
The postracial President? We are not blue states or red states, but one United States? Not at this time. Not with this President.
