Comments On Obama And Boehner

All of this has caveats like crazy. All of this has elements of the “crazy”. All of it. And all of the people.

The Republicans are in the process of picking their nominee. Some are crazy, some are moderate, some are forceful and others are meek. All of that’s true and just because it IS true doesn’t make the process invalid. The primary is a key process in the larger process we loosely call “Democracy”. And THAT process should be respected.

The President wants to deliver a speech. And when the President wants to do that, in front of Congress or not, we should listen and pay attention. And if we are Congress, all the more so. However, with power comes responsibility. Recently I requested meeting with…my boss’s boss’s boss. He found time on his schedule and it was set. As the day to that meeting got closer, HIS boss requested time; the same time that he had blocked for me. He could have simply told me that we had to reschedule, he didn’t. He asked.

With power comes responsibility.

Obama shouldn’t have scheduled this speech on a date that conflicted with the debate. After all, he picked a day more than a week away after, AFTER returning from a 10 day vacation. The time clearly wasn’t crucial. But Obama didn’t do the reasonable thing-he did the partisan thing. And when he did that, he forced the Republican’s hand. And they pushed back.

Now, back to my example. My vice president asked me if we could reschedule. Even if I hadn’t been okay with it, I was, I would’ve agreed; he’s the boss and he gets to do things, even if I don’t like those things. Boehner should have called his Congress and told them to get to DC and be in their seats at the appointed hour.

But he didn’t. He declined to meet with the President of the United States of America. And instead, offered his own new date.

The whole nation was holding its breath, waiting to ee why Obama would do. We all knew it was chumpy of Obama to schedule the speech over the debate, but that Boehner pushed back was remarkable. I’ll be the first to admit that I am not fully comfortable with power. I’m not skilled in the proper use of it. But I’m a low-level manager still learning.

Obama isn’t. He’s the ‘effin President. And he got schooled in about as bad a way as I’ve seen in a long long time.

I don’t know what leaves me more saddened. The fact that we have a Speaker of the House who doesn’t respect the office of the President or that we have a low-level administrator sitting in the White House who doesn’t respect the office of the President.

Either way, today was the day that demonstrated, more than any other day, that Obama is in over his head. That he doesn’t know how to lead, to manage, to drive change, to innovate to take command. He simply doesn’t have the life experience to be the President.

To any reasonable American, today should have removed any doubt that this man does not deserve another term.

7 responses to “Comments On Obama And Boehner

  1. Much of your criticism seems more and more spot on. Trouble is I don’t care for most of the people who are vying for his job.

    • Much of your criticism seems more and more spot on.

      I was making this point with a Liberal friend of mine. Finally he said, “Face it, the fact that Obama is ineffective is your favorite aspect of him.”

      I just stopped cold.

      He’s right.

      • Obama got a lot passed when the Democrats held the House. The GOP has blocked him. He’s tried to compromise rather than battle, and that has the left really upset — they see that as weakness, they think he’s “playing too nice” with the GOP. Meanwhile, Obama has overseen the killing of Bin Laden, engineered a successful strategy in Libya (and I think ultimately in Syria), and has had more accomplishments in three plus years than most Presidents. The only reason he’s perceived as vulnerable is the economy, and NO President would be in any better situation, this is a problem that no one person or party can solve.

        I do not agree that the debate was a big deal in scheduling — at this point debates are meaningless and watched only by political junkies. Avoiding the Saints-Packers game was a bigger deal. I think Boehner came off looking childish in this. Obama showed grace in not making it a big deal, but Obama comes out ahead. He showed grace and good will, Boehner looks sort of like, well, I’ll not use the word…

      • Obama got a lot passed when the Democrats held the House.

        To be fair, he had 60 in the Senate and had Pelosi, perhaps the most accomplished Speaker in decades, working a House for him.

        He’s tried to compromise rather than battle, and that has the left really upset — they see that as weakness, they think he’s “playing too nice” with the GOP.

        Yes.

        He is a wimp. And THAT is my point.

        Power is not something that, once you have it, people just role over and yield to you. Power is a tool that you use. You wield it.

        This is why Republicans get more done then Democrats. Bush got things done because he was a business owner and a governor. He was accustomed to using power.

        No offense, but Obama was a college lecturer. While noble, certainly not a profession that sharpens the blades of power. Obama trades in words and ideas…hell, more than that, he trades in ideals! He envisions and dreams and …. and he Hopes.

        But he doesn’t DO!

        And that’s my point. Agree or disagree with him, and I disagree, when it comes to actually governing, the man is like tits on a boar pig.

        I do not agree that the debate was a big deal in scheduling

        But it IS a big deal to the people in DC. And he should’ve known that.

        I think Boehner came off looking childish in this. Obama showed grace in not making it a big deal, but Obama comes out ahead. He showed grace and good will, Boehner looks sort of like, well, I’ll not use the word…

        We’ll prolly never agree on this one. But in playground politics, Boehner just kicked his ass.

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  3. Scott,.

    I love how you believe Obama is this fair compromiser who is just tryin to get along and as Rush would say ” those wascally Wepublicans” just keep screwing him over, even at the expense of the country . When he, Nancy and Harry had more power than God in Washington, he said Republicans can come along, but they have to sit in the back . Or in the words of the wicked witch of the west, Ms. Nancy, ” WE WON! ” , go screw yourselves .

    When he did bring in Wepublicans, he took some meaningless scraps from their proposals and claimed he had a bipartisan program. The man cannot tell the truth, just like he can never speak plainly . Every phrase has at least a touch of vagueness to it , so plausible deniability can be an option .

    ” The only reason he’s perceived as vulnerable is the economy, and NO President would be in any better situation, this is a problem that no one person or party can solve. ”

    Wow. I hope you realize that any leader with a bad record could use that argument . It is an unprovable or not disprovable statement and therefore not valid . Like saying jobs were saved or created. Totally without value . Or the argument, the economy was worse than we knew when we took over. Uhh, Senators Obama and Biden were in the Senate and in Washington, in the years before they took the executive branch . They shared in many of the decisions that caused the economic crisis, that brought them to power . They didn’t know how bad things were ?

    We can judge them against the standard of their own predictions and promises. ‘ Our policies will keep unemployment below 8%’. ‘ Green jobs are the future for America ‘. ‘ Health care reform will save billions.’ If it was so freaking wonderful Obama would not have had to exempt so many from it . And so many of those were political allies .

    No , your arguments like President Obama’s policies are weak .

    President Obama’s handling of the economy is like his handling of the BP spill, incompetent . Killing Bin Laden and getting really lucky in Libya are the high points of his Presidency .

    Pino makes the point that Obama’s real skill is word craft. I say that makes him really qualified to sell cars or be a bureaucrat in the European Union . I wish him well in one of those professions when he retires from the White House in 2013 .

  4. Alan, don’t try to write as if you are doing talk radio — talk radio is emotion-driven propaganda, and sometimes it seems like a sensible guy like you gets sucked into it. Economists do, by the way, analyze policies with regard to what might have happened had other policies been undertaken. It can’t be proven, but it’s valuable, it’s how policy analysis works.

    You aren’t addressing my arguments, you’re just calling them weak. My argument is that starting in 2007 the US entered what would become the biggest economic crisis since the great depression thanks to 30 years of growing imbalances. Debt — governmental, private and business — started growing in the 80s creating an illusion of prosperity, and after a brief leveling off in the 90s, grew again dramatically. A good $14 trillion of this is debt to foreign holders, China having a large share. Our current account deficit grew dramatically. The US has been living beyond its means for 30 years, consuming far more than produced. The imbalances are not fixed with magic policies or by one President. I’ve been consistent in saying that back to 2008 when I started my blog (and predicting this kind of crisis much earlier than that). I’ve made it very clear that this crisis is a bi-partisan creation (most of the de-regulation that I criticize took place under Clinton’s watch, with enthusiastic support from Clinton’s team).

    You’re giving a silly tirade against Obama, partisan and emotion-driven. You have to learn to get out of partisan-think. For instance, I had considerable praise for President Bush during much of his second terms because I wasn’t a knee jerk “criticize the other side” (like talk radio left or right), but actually try to think with independent reason, knowing that just “choosing a side” leads to an inability to learn. Most importantly, if people don’t come to grips with the scope of the problem facing our country — if they just point fingers and blame the other side, succumbing to the emotionally satisfying but intellectually void world of talk radio, then the country will continue a relatively rapid decline.

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