A Nation Cries out for a Leader

For five and one half years we've had, as President, a man who loves the trappings of the office, but dislikes and avoids any of the real responsibilities of the job.  Barack Obama is a gifted orator, perhaps the greatest to even hold the office of President. He is a visionary and a man who, at least at one time, had a real feel for the pulse of the people.

He has vision, but lacks virtually any ability.  He is not a leader and he is not, most certainly, a politician.  He cannot negotiate and is completely unwilling to compromise.  He rails daily against Republicans for not bending to his will, but never works with them to achieve a mutual advantage.  Mutual being the operative word.

Slowly, but surely, the press and the public have turned against him. Today most people (a surprisingly large majority) wish they had elected Mitt Romney president. Add me to that column, because today we really need a President. And we don't have one.

Because he has no ability to manage the office, Barack Obama has checked out. Republican's claim Obama has chosen to become an "Imperial President," acting on his own as if he were a king.  Even that is not true, he simply has embarked on a two and a half year retirement tour doing the only thing he knows how to do, give speeches to dwindling and increasingly hostile crowds.

Have we ever had a President have complete breakdown in office?  Rumor has it that Woodrow Wilson did.  Wilson's wife managed much of the last years of his Presidency.

Today the border and immigration problem has reached crisis proportions.  The administration is furtively hiding tens of thousands of illegal immigrants all over the country, many of them children.  Even Congressmen and Governors are being kept on the dark, not allowed to visit immigrants or encampments or even allowed to know the locations where illegal immigrants are held. Rumors are rampant.

Rich Lowrey (yes, I know he is a partisan Republican) has written a brilliant essay in The New York Post, The President's Man Caused Disaster. Below are some key points, rearranged and abbreviated by me. Be certain you follow the link above and read his original and complete essay.

The first rule in a crisis for any executive is put on his windbreaker and boots and get out on the ground. President George W. Bush didn’t do it soon enough after Hurricane Katrina and, politically, could never make up for it.

Obama’s bizarre resistance to visiting the border on his fundraising swing out West fueled talk of the influx as Obama’s “Katrina moment.”

The president didn’t have any depressing visits to frightened ranchers, overwhelmed border agents or desperate migrants on his itinerary.

Obama’s policies are responsible for the influx of immigrants from the border. It is, in the argot of his administration, a “man-caused disaster.”

According to the Los Angeles Times, the number of immigrants younger than 18 who were deported or turned away from ports of entry declined from 8,143 in 2008 to 1,669 last year. There were 95 minors deported from the entire interior of the country last year.

At the same time, the number of unaccompanied alien children arriving from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras exploded from less than 4,000 several years ago to 40,000 since last October.

The White House brushes off criticism that Obama is avoiding the border as mere “optics,” in contrast to its highly substantive focus.

But it’s still not taking the crisis seriously. In a letter to Texas Gov. Rick Perry, White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett downgraded the erstwhile “humanitarian crisis” on the border (the president’s words) to an “urgent humanitarian situation.”

When pressed on the shift in verbiage, ever-judicious White House press secretary Josh Earnest explained that it is both a crisis and a situation. Yes, it’s that bad.

The real question is can President Obama "Man Up" and accept the responsibilities of President?  We really need a leader.  Actually we really need several leaders.

In 1974 it was a trio of Republicans in Congress who grew to accept the challenge and face down another "Imperial President," Richard Nixon.  It would have been impossible for a Democrat, a member of the opposition, to carry the hard facts to President Nixon.  If the crisis in leadership in 1974 was to be solved, it had to be done by members of the President's own party.

It was Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, House Minority Leader John J. Rhodes and Sen. Barry M. Goldwater, who had both the integrity and courage to face President Nixon with the news that he must resign for the good of the country.

It is quite interesting that just a few days ago Barack Obama named Richard Nixon as one of the Republicans he most admires [LINK: Obama's speech in Austin Texas]. 

Let's hope President Obama does not have to resign. Let's hope he can become the President our country so desperately needs.

Empty Words

Obama is a Lock for an Eight Year Failed Presidency

For over a year I've predicted a dozen times in this blog alone that Romney cannot win the election and that President Obama is assured of certain victory. I predicted Romney would repeatedly stumble, miss opportunities and fail. Romney is that tone deaf. 

Today I repeat that assertion. President Obama wlll be re-elected Tuesday and by a comfortable margin. 

Curiously Mitt Romney had a chance. Even more curiously, he decided to forgo almost certain election and pursue a genuinely bizarre last minute campaign strategy, ignoring the huge issue of the Obama Administration's cover-up of Libyan Ambassador Steven's torture and murder in Benghazi and opting instead to double down on a deceptive ad about Jeep moving production to China. 

Instead of exposing the truth of the biggest cover-up of this century, Romney decides to repeat a lie about automobile production. Missteps don't get much bigger than this. 

Someday, someone will write a book about this election (they always do) and will reveal why Romney made the gigantic mistake. 

In the meantime, after his comfortable re-election , President Obama will face a massive Congressional and media investigations that could actually bring down his Presidency. Shades of Nixon and Watergate. 

The nation is the loser next Tuesday. We could have had a competent disciplined President who would have turned around our economy and stabilized world relations. Instead will will get four genuinely horrific years of gridlock, investigations, bitterness, divisiveness and an utterly failed Presidency.

The Worst President in the Last 100 Years

My last essay (blog entry) about Mitt Romney's ill fated campaign for President began with the sentence "Barack Obama is, in many ways, the worst President in the last 100 years."  My Liberal Friends on Twitter, while agreeing with me that Romney will lose the election, lambasted me for my condemnation of Obama. I wish they were right. I wish my accusations were not true. But they are.

President Obama loves to campaign and loves to play President, but is both unwilling and unsuited to actually do the work of the job. He is the first President in 20 years to not meet a single Head of State during his visit to the United Nations. He instead appeared on “The View.” 

His avoidance of his National Security Briefings (he attends only 30% of the briefings) and his failure to hold a single meeting of his own Jobs Council in over 6 months are just two of dozens of examples of his avoiding the actual work of being President. He doesn’t love the work, he loves the role.

This is also why he avoids the work of actually compromising with Congress. By delegating his normal role to Pelosi and Reid, he abdicated the normal responsibilities of the executive branch.

I applaud the few out there who admit to knowing Obama's flaws and have decided to vote for him anyway. These are wise folks who weigh the facts and the risks of a Romney Presidency and feel Obama is the better choice.

I've chronicled many of the problems with Obama's policies and p[practices in previous blog entries.  You can go back and read them here: President Obama (WARNING: There are dozens of articles, some only tangentially mentioning Obama).

But recent events in Libya and the Middle East may well be President Obama's lowest point.  His policies were wrong to begin with and have failed badly.  He was cavalier about defense and never took the threat from Islamic Radicals seriously.  His avoidance of Security Briefings and total failure to prepare for the anniversary of 9-11 are failures enough to warrant his defeat, but the lying now coming out of his office and  the State Department demand he be removed from office.

You just don't lie when the entire world know the truth.  And he is bringing down Secretary of State Clinton with him, although she shares some of the blame, especially for misleading Congress.  

The murder of Ambassador Stevens lies at their door.  If they were candid and honest I could forgive the lapses of judgement, but the cover-up is unforgivable.

If the Press were to honestly cover these issues (and they are finally starting to do this) Obama could not possibly be reelected.

Obama pressed on failures at Univision forum

U.S. probes whether Benghazi attackers had inside help

State Department was discussing putting Marines in Libya 'sometime in next five years’

Republican senators decry ‘useless, worthless' Clinton briefing on Libya attack

IG: White House ‘Made it Impossible’ to Pursue Lead in Fast and Furious Probe

Deafening Silence About the Camp Bastion Attack