Change You Can Believe!

By Gene Quinn
Posted on Monday, 18th May 2009

At many times over the past year or so I have been terribly skeptical about Barack Obama, and when he was elected President of the United States I really feared for the future in many regards. I am still not convinced about the economic direction of the country. After all, if the Obama economic plan works it will be exactly the first time in recorded history where massive spending and higher taxes worked to pull a nation out of recession. I can’t say I see the wisdom in following a path that has no success stories to point to, particularly when the exact opposite has worked every time it has been tried. Nevertheless, I can’t say the Obama economic plan won’t work, and to keep optimistic perhaps we should say that massive spending and higher taxes are about due to spawn a recovery, right? Sort of over due, because even bad policies are successful from time to time, right?

I am not writing this article to bash the President or his economic plan, although I couldn’t help myself. What I am really writing to discuss is the fact that for the first time I think I can see the change the President and his supporters have talked about for so long! Many of his supporters probably thought the “change you can believe in” slogan meant departure and change with respect to policies of President Bush. Who knew that the change you can believe would wind up being President Obama continually changing his mind and adopting Bush national security and terror policies! This gives me hope that eventually the President will realize that he cannot close the prison in Guantanamo Bay, and since I live in Northern Virginia I really hope he will change his policy on letting Al Qaeda trained terrorist loose to live in Alexandria and on government welfare. For now, I will remain optimistic. After all, President Obama seems to almost weekly adopt another Bush policy on national security and terrorism. Now that is change I can live with!

On Saturday, The Hill reported how liberals are not taking kindly to President Obama’s new found sense of responsibility, saying:

Obama, this week, found some of his closest allies — those who viewed his election as the answer to their prayers — feeling betrayed and making that unfathomable comparison: Obama is like Bush.

I have long felt that eventually Obama would have to grow into the Presidency and make decisions that at least wouldn’t openly and recklessly expose the country to needless danger. I must admit though that the speed at which President Obama is abandoning the left is surprising to even me, and I dare say surprising to his longest and strongest supporters who chose him over Hillary Clinton after Obama realized the only chance he had was to pander to the left-leaning extremists in hopes of chiselling away at the seemingly insurmountable lead enjoyed by then front-runner Clinton. I have also openly predicted that once Obama attempts to move to the center a la Bill Clinton his base would first be bewildered, then feel betrayed. Betrayal is a hard emotion to overcome, and with all the hopes, dreams and promises (some real and some fiction) that Obama supporters heard I predict the fall is going to be far harder for Obama than for any other politician in recent memory; and perhaps harder and faster than any politician ever. That is the trouble with being a transcending figure. If you don’t live up to the hype and expectations of your followers they leave you faster than rats leaving a sinking ship.

To be fair to President Obama, who could ever live up to the hype and expectations of his followers? We have so often heard from politicians who say one thing and then do another, but for some reason enormous numbers of people really believed that Barack Obama would be different. It is really unfair to hold him to a higher standard, after all he is just a politician, but there will be many on the left who will hold him to a standard that is unreasonably high and simply unattainable. I don’t know whether it is because he was a community organizer, grew up extremely poor or because he is African American, but whatever the reason, his fall will be hard and I think we are starting to see the beginning of that fall very early on during his tenure. Of course, the Obama machine allowed this god-like adoration to build throughout the campaign and early months of his Administration, so only he and his handlers will be to blame for the fall.

So far, if you are keeping score, President Obama has back-tracted and adopted Bush policies on:

And it seems as if President Obama is content with a watered down version of the climate change legislation, which is also angering supporters. On top of all this, thanks to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, the debate on enhanced interrogation techniques is focusing on what the Speaker knew and when she knew it. Even CIA Director Leon Panetta took a swing at Pelosi, issuing a memo to the intelligence community that said the CIA told the truth and Pelosi is the one who is lying. This “memo” might as well have been issued as a press release because every media outlet was given a copy, and it is impossible to believe that the White House did not give the go ahead to Panetta, which can’t be good for Pelosi.

Many are saying that eventually President Bush will be viewed as one of our great Presidents, and I believe that myself. I do wish he had not made the decision to forego free market economics, but hindsight is always 20-20. The fact that Bush was taken by surprise and tried to avert a disaster is no excuse for President Obama to double, triple, quadruple down on the mistake of the first stimulus package, but that is what he is doing. If it were not for his spending like a drunken sailor with a few trillion dollars of disposable income borrowed from an uncomfortable and uneasy “friend” it would be practically impossible to distinguish Bush from Obama and Obama from Bush.

Enough! I said I wasn’t going to criticize President Obama (much) in this article, but that is proving difficult as you no doubt can see. So let me end this article by observing that President Bush kept us safe for over 7 years when no one thought that would be possible. With President Obama adopting so many Bush era policies it will be President Obama more than anyone that writes the Bush legacy. If someone who is Bush’s polar opposite agrees with Bush policies then it is going to become nearly impossible for anyone to criticize Bush, but I don’t expect that will stop them any time soon. Do you?

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