America's Terminal Presidency

or: If Obama is Montgomery Brewster, then who is playing Spike Nolan?

or: Andy Taylor would arrest Obama for fingering Aunt Bee’s pie in Mayberry

I am a dedicated politico. I find it is fun, interesting, and never boring, following politics; this is because of the general outrage and regular shock to the system that results in a life trying to track the public figures out there today. By no stretch of the imagination can I claim to have the whole story any time I report on these things. I check my facts against three different papers and then I extrapolate my own paranoid bias from these, creating a firestorm of controversy and disgust at the inferences and comments I make on these subject. Recently a few things have surfaced and been reported on that freak me the fuck out. I mean I am truly shaken at my core by what is going on out there today, and I cannot sit idly by as these things occur and unfold under public scrutiny. What is going on today has serious overtones though I am having a tough time tying it all together as some policy the White House stands by. For the most part I feel like this administration is diving head first in to a pool that has yet to be confirmed as half full or half empty.

First point I would like to address is the President’s public plea for David A. Paterson to withdraw from a bid for a full term in 2010. Mr. Paterson has been a thorn in the side of the Democratic Party as he has made major missteps over the last few months that the White House has had to deal with. The Legally-blind, African-American, New York Governor has upset Obama’s allies, snubbed them publicly even, openly defied the White House, and most recently he made comments that the criticism of his ability to govern was racially motivated and that Obama would soon suffer the same scrutiny. The brass balls on this guy.

There are a few things here that alarm me. First off, that the administration is trying, publicly, to get him to lay off a 2010 bid at all. Look, his approval rating is in the toilet and Cuomo can carry the Dem ticket by himself, and in this climate I think he can win it handily, which can then undo the Caroline Kennedy snubbing and debacle when he takes over. Secondly, I think this is just a war the White House can’t win without looking terrible. Meddling in local politics will not look good on them no matter how it falls. If they push him over for their own gain they look like big government muscle making the public’s decisions for them. Besides that they are shoving a black, blind man out, and you can’t win a fight with a cripple whether you beat them or not. If they can’t get him to step aside they run the risk of showing descent in the Dem ranks and look foolish for not being able to exert strength, which the GOP will latch right on to. Just like a fist fight with a cripple you either look terrible for beating up on the handicapped, but if you lose you look ri-goddamn-diculous for losing the fight. No upside.

This is only the most recent play the white house has made for local races to try and get the right man for the job in to the seats so they can have a united front. This bothers me in the way they are handling New York, as well as Massachusetts, Illinois, and others. Dems right now are trying to pass massive ‘big government’ legislature that the GOP and the general public are weary of, i.e. Health Care. It does not help their cause right now to be looking like the government their opponents are supposedly ‘painting’ them to be. Here they are trying to socialize medicine on an unprecedented scale and then they go and start jumping right in to states’ backyards with the federal government putting their hand in small town pies. This is a tough one to spin and you can bet your ass that loud people are latching on to this.

Outside of this Obama is going on a campaign blitz with an all out assault on the media this last Sunday morning. Obama did individual interviews for five news networks, as well as a translation for Univision, on Sunday morning alone, making him the first to do since Lewinsky’s lawyer accomplished this feat over a decade ago. There was one network he left out and boy it does not bode well for him. He left the #1 rated news broadcasting network off his list; Fox News. This was a blatant jab at Fox News, and rightly so. They had it coming, but boy was it wrong to just snub them. If it were my call they would have been first on the list and I would have had Beck himself interviewing Obama. Put Beck to the test in this spot. This is a man who has called the government socialist, accused them of tearing apart the fabric of America, destroying our values, oh and called Obama an ‘all out racist’. Who better to have to look Obama in the eye than Beck? Instead of making Beck the most uncomfortable broadcaster in America and letting the twit have it, Obama just fed their fire by leaving them out. This has created a backlash that the White House is a bad sport, whiney, and doesn’t want to give the opposition a fair shake. This move makes it undeniably true and in this Obama has infuriated the Fox News viewers and given the broadcasters more ammunition. Boy, wouldn’t it have been great to see Obama go toe to toe with Beck and just let him have it, face his accuser and tell the heir apparent of his opposition what he thought of Fox, Beck, and the filth they air. Man, would have paid pay-per-view prices for that show!

Where else are we going wrong, the name escapes me. I remember this county, had some issues with it in the last decade, we sent people there, they are still there, oh and we have no idea how to get out of it…is it quicksand? No, it’s Afghanistan. Yes, remember before we took on Iraq, we went to this place to get terrorists and make this country safer? No, well turns out there is still some shit going down, and now that Obama has done some work to try and get us out of Iraq, turns out our fair general McChrystal wants some more boys for Afghanistan or else we’re gonna ‘lose’. (as if we aren’t already) In a U.N. speech at the generally assembly, he did not really touch on the subject, though he covered a ton of other topics. Right now this administration is trying to decide on a strategy in a protracted eight year conflict that has lost us massive amounts of money, loss of life, and a loss of confidence in America as a national power. We lost all respect as a nation years back and the fact that we are still at this is ridiculous. I have said this before, but you can’t declare a war on a noun, I don’t care how many syllables it has. Drugs: not going well. Terrorism: refer to ‘drugs’.

The President doesn’t know whether to pull out, go in, go in to another country, take back the troops he already sent, root out Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan, stay to ‘rebuild’, etc. There seems to be true, and honest, confusion in the administration as they decide on how to proceed in meeting after meeting with no consensus. Another massive mistake on his part would be to upset both the public and fellow democrats by increasing America’s participation in the middle east. He needs a win badly right now, and a great move that the public would love would be the ned, or planned end to our foreign clusterfuck. Despite being a massive financial drain it is something he has done little about since being President and it seems that a lot of things he could be winning on are killing him right now. He needs a feather in the cap to point at, but the closest thing he has is the ‘Cash for Clunkers’ program, and frankly anything with ‘clunker’ in the title should not be top on your list of ‘pros’.

Outside of all of this the economy is still fucked, they are considering up-ing the first time buyers rebate incentive from 8,000 to 15,000 and extending the deadline from Nov 31, to the first of 2010 to get people back in to homes in this country. The bailouts…let’s not talk about that. The stimulus package…let’s pass on that, we can’t find al the money yet. Health Care…never mind that. Oh, how about the talk that Obama would be willing to listen to proposals by newspapers about bailout programs for failing news gathering organizations. What!? Now you wanna hear about it!? Are you fucking kidding me? This should have been one of the first things you handled; the utterly vital distribution of information so that this nation can be knowledgeable enough to stop being so afraid of everything, and now you’re thinking about helping. This is too little too late. This is a serious industry under duress, but I fear it is another bad investment. I could not in good conscience watch him hand out hundreds of millions to newspapers that are going to fail anyway; it would be Chrysler all over again. Can you imagine the situation though, where the government has it’s hands in industry, banking, and the free press? Talk about a Trifecta for the Communism junkies out there.

Overall I have to say that I am a bit nervous about how this government will try and spend it’s way out of it’s problems next. Spending money like a bad Brewster’s Millions clip and not thinking of the backlash. In the same fashion as Brewster it is all kinds of hush hush and vague why we are investing in such frivolous things that are not solid, but fleeting items and events that have no long term return for us to look forward to. It seems Obama is having a tough time getting things done. I have a theory though. When I have a list of things to do I write them out, all of them, on a sheet of paper, and then I start off with the easiest items. There are a couple reasons for this; first I want to get a lot of things off the list and starting at simple is good, and secondly I want to feel a sense of accomplishment on the day if I could not get to it all. When I didn’t get it all done, because I bite off more than I can chew pretty often, I knew the next day was just a couple of things. Obama seems to be starting, as a first term President, with the toughest and most laborious items first, like a terminal patient getting the big stuff out of the way before the end. This is disturbing because it makes me feel like he is legislating and governing this country as if he won’t get re-elected, as it he only has the four years and is going for broke; acting as President in this manner, this ‘nothing to lose’ ideology, will lead to one thing…only the four years. God help us then…Palin 2012(shudder).