I was beat down and tired after a twelve-hour day, but when I came home – expecting to hand off the Taco Bell to my wife and to bed – and saw the SoTU on the set, I just had to sit and listen. God bless her, my wife was able to quietly tolerate the experience for my benefit; she is not a political type, but she understands my bent in that direction.
In the course of the SoTU address, I noted these peculiarities:
1 – As he has for such a long time, Obama continued to blame Bush for the mess he found waiting for him when he assumed the mantle. While it is true that Bush left a horrible mess in his wake, there are two problems with Obama's incessant resort to this issue. The first is that he had to know what he was getting into when he announced his bid for the Oval Office and so he has no room to use that excuse for the state of things in his presidency; if he did not want to deal with the problems, he should have withdrawn from the race. If he proceeded to pursue the office of president and had no clue as to the state of things, he had no business seeking the office of America's leader. No matter how one looks at the president's excuses, the old saw is still true – A man who is good at making excuses is good for little else.
He is seeking to divert attention from his own failure by pointing at the failure of another leader with whom many Americans are still deeply unhappy. Pointing out Bush's mistakes and failures cannot mitigate the number and degree of Obama's own mistakes and failures – no matter how many times he uses this tactic, it changes nothing – any more than speeding blind-folded down the wrong side of the freeway prevents one from hitting an oncoming car. The fact that Obama is still using this method – a year after his election and with so many broken promises and failed policies clinging to him – shows a lack of imagination and, worse, an arrogant disdain for the American people. How are Americans supposed to respect and support a president who has no respect for them?
2 – His statement that "(spending hundreds of billions of dollars when we were already in debt ten-fold more than that) was the right thing to do" makes one wonder where his understanding of economics comes from. The last time I saw the average American do that, they wound up in court for credit fraud and bankruptcy; how does it magically become legal and accepted behavior for a government? I am curious as to whether he has ever managed a household before, because his ideas regarding economics are nothing short of illegal and disastrous for the average American homemaker or head-of-household. Honestly; I would love to see how such economics would work on my level.
3 – He says he wants to return trust to Americans. I would like to believe that. I do not. There are several things I can think of that he could do to work toward that direction. These include returning to The Constitution – as it was written, not as it has been interpreted – and eliminating legal precedent, "Constitutional Law", and judicial review. Give us back a rule of Law in place of the current rule of Lawyers, and I can see us trusting him a little more.
4 – He made the statement that, in a nation of over 300 million people, democracy can be noisy and messy. I believe that was one of the truest statements he ever made. What he failed to say is that democracy in nation of so many should also be very, very slow. Democracy – rule by the people – is not possible if any one of those people is not kept in-the-know and provided the opportunity to voice his will in the government. This would slow matters down enormously, but the central government would have a much harder time getting anything by the American people – and that is a good thing. Consider this: when human tissues grow out of their normal rate and form, they become – cancer. When government grows out of its normal rate and form, it becomes - toxic, deadly.
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