Obama's Down, But Don't Count Him Out

Next Tuesday the President will be opening the school year nationwide with a canned address, talking points and helpful charts to start the students' annual propaganda school year off with a bang. On Wednesday night, he will address Congress and the nation on his nationalized health care scheme. But don't fail to notice that his face and his voice are showing up five to seven days a week, and may be implanting themselves in many people's minds as a permanent fixture.

The Democrats are comparing Obama to Lincoln, FDR and occasionally, Jesus Christ. Well, we know that's hooey. But too many Republicans who ought to know better are counting on Obama's poll numbers as an indication that he's more like other one-term wonders in the White House. Big mistake, and we'll pay dearly if we allow it to go on unabated.

Before we get too complacent, remember that we made that mistake with Bill Clinton, a far less ruthless politician than Obama. People had actually begun to speak of him as "irrelevant," so much so that he made speeches denying that he was irrelevant. Shortly thereafter, he was re-elected as the first two-term Democratic President since FDR. He won on a combination of personal affability, a lousy Republican candidate running against him, MSM squelching of "bimbo eruptions," and being lucky enough not to have to face a major international crisis. He lobbed a few missiles at Arab tents, quasi-military targets, and aspirin factories and made himself look decisive.

Assuming that Clinton's sleaziness would be enough along with his sagging poll numbers, the Republicans ran a lackluster campaign with a lackluster candidate, and handed Clinton his second term. His civilian criminal law view of terrorist war resulted in a few isolated prosecutions and convictions, including some of the principals in the first attack on the World Trade Center. It also resulted in an energized Al Qaeda. His refusal once to accept Osama bin Laden as a prisoner of war, and again his refusal to kill bin Laden on at least one occasion at a training camp played a major part in the subsequent second and far more deadly attack on the World Trade Center. His treatment of the attack on the USS Cole told terrorists worldwide that the United States would not do what was necessary to hunt them down and kill them. And all because Republicans underestimated Clinton and relied on polls rather than principles.

But because Obama is soft-spoken, proud of his family, loyal to his wife, and exudes phony warmth and misplaced compassion, far too many conservatives compare him to Jimmy Carter. The comparisons of certain milestones and public statements do tend to make those who don't view politics in-depth are somewhat apt. But only to a point. Make no mistake. Barack Obama is no Jimmy Carter. Yes, he's namby-pamby about protecting American national security. Yes, he talks in spiritual terms (though not in strictly Christian terms). Yes, he talks platitudes instead of policy. And yes, he plays footsy with Arab dictators. But that's about as far as the comparisons can go, at least until some Middle East religious fanatic takes over an American embassy and holds everyone hostage. Then he'll have a half-assed Keystone Kops failed rescue attempt to finish the parallels.

So let's take a look at what's different (beside the fact that we don't have a Ronald Reagan standing in the wings). Jimmy Carter was a tough politician, by rural Georgia standards. Obama is a ruthless, doctrinaire politician from Chicago, with all the nastiness and will to power that goes with being a major player in a major urban political machine. When Carter became President, he failed to do proper obeisance to the Democratic political machines which got him the big states and the big cities. Obama knows where his power comes from, and he gives it proper allegiance, by staying in daily contact with them, and appointing their political hacks and agitators to major government positions.

Carter had powerful political enemies within his own party, and it made it difficult for him to propose then pursue a purely Carter agenda. Ted Kennedy showed public contempt for his President, and finally prepared to run against him after mocking him in the 1980 primaries as being a "sissy, running his campaign from the White House Rose Garden." Even those few Democrats who do not see eye-to-eye with Obama continue to present a united "stand behind our President" public image. Carter was a proud Navy man. Obama and his cohorts despise America's military men and women, but openly praise them while denigrating their main mission--to keep America safe by defeating the enemy overseas.

Carter won his election against an inept President who had succeeded one of the most intensely disliked Presidents in modern history. The Viet Nam War was already being left behind, but Watergate was not. The memory of Nixon's sneakiness combined with Carter's image as a lovable uncle overcame Gerald Ford's lame attempts to enunciate a clear Republican agenda. Obama came into office, succeeding a predecessor from the other party who had won two elections in squeakers. But Obama got a clear, if not large, majority of the votes in his election. He inherited a financial crisis which he was able to pin on George Bush (even though it was only partially true), and a war that had become unpopular and which he could blame almost entirely on Republicans.

Carter faced a Congress which was just barely Democratic, and certainly not unified. Obama inherited a Congress which was already heavily Democratic, and he brought more along with him on his coattails. Carter faced governors with a slight Democratic lead, while Obama has a clear majority of governors on his side and from his party. The press and TV leaned liberal, but did not act as surrogates for the Democratic Party under Carter. Today, Obama has a press and TV deeply ensconced in his camp. Carter wasn't very media savvy. Obama is a master of it. Carter had to invite the media to come to the White House. Obama has one network practically in permanent residence in the White House.

Like nearly all Presidents before him, Carter came into office to effect a change within the historical American system. And here is where Obama is completely unlike Carter, or any other President of the Twentieth Century. He doesn't want to move the system in a different direction. He wants to scrap it. He was mentored by communists, homosexuals, black liberation theologians, a foreign Muslim father (for awhile) and a radical mother who preferred almost anywhere to America, and of course 60s radical activists. He has a strong streak of authoritarian narcissism. And when he announced during the campaign that he wanted to "bring a fundamental change to American politics," he wasn't speaking abstractly.

Reaching the voters has changed radically in the thirty-two years between Carter's election and Obama's election. With his Alinsky training and deep involvement in ACORN, he knows how to organize every group with any dissatisfaction with mainstream America. And the internet didn't even exist when Carter was elected, but Obama played it like a harp. Carter fought off personal enemies and political opponents in order to enact his version of clean, compassionate America. Obama sees only flies to be swatted if they get in the way of his inexorable march toward a socialist, rabid egalitarian society.

Although Carter did have a good education, he came off (purposely or accidentally) as one step above a country bumpkin. His Southern accent was rural and exaggerated. Obama sounds urbane and crisp, and flaunts his [somewhat questionable] education and professional credentials. Carter couldn't convince the American people of much of anything. Obama has brilliantly succeeded in fooling the public into believing he governs from intellect rather than emotion. And again, unlike Carter, Obama is a master of misdirection. Obama speaks of equality, fairness, help from the government, cleaning up the economic mess, providing health care for everyone, knocking the rich and powerful off their lofty perches, eliminating special interests and making sure that everyone shares in American success. In fact, behind it all, is the radical thinking, but without the violent tactics, of Fidel Castro and the other "successful" leftists in the Americas.

Carter never appointed a leftist radical to any office, though at the time some of his appointments seemed very liberal. Carter foolishly backed down from dictators and foreign leaders whom he really didn't like much. Obama not only likes them, he patronizes them. He bowed to the Saudi King, and practically made love to Hugo Chavez. He giggled like a little girl around Russian President Medvedev, and quietly allowed Vladimir Putin, former (?) head of the KGB to lecture him like an arrant schoolboy (partially because he thoroughly agrees that America is fatally flawed). Although he is smart enough not to openly encourage America's enemies, he certainly doesn't seem to be able to find the words in his extensive vocabulary to criticize them or stand up to them.

Bill Clinton did attempt to appoint a few very left ultraliberals, but he never intentionally appointed a known communist, 60s radical left activist, or racial supremacist/separatist. When he got caught on a few really bad appointments, he knew he had to back down or else. Obama has knowingly appointed exactly such types to high positions, and utterly refuses to acknowledge what he has done, and shows every sign of standing behind his anti-American appointments. As a candidate, he felt he had to disassociate himself from white-hating Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But as he said when asked once after he became President why something he believed in should automatically trump what an opponent might believe, "I won." That belief in the absolute righteousness of the Obama Presidency motivates him today. He won't throw a white-hating, professed communist named Van Jones out of his administration, and won't respond to questions about why he appointed a man like that in the first place.

Another thing has changed, and it's something Obama plays in a way Carter could only dream of. America's attitude toward a common culture and a common understanding of the concept of ordered liberty has morphed into assorted victim groups and special pleaders with no belief in anything resembling unity. Diversity has become a loathsome, mindless mantra. And Obama knows how to play all sides against the middle. He doesn't have a majority of Americans so much as a majority of the pluralities which comprise all those various groups which he can turn on each other. As Quin Hillyer has said: "Obama has the talent to raise demogoguery to an art form."

Carter tweaked the tax code a bit, and said so. Obama plans to tax every hardworking American into destitution while claiming he's handing out tax cuts. Carter would have had a heart attack if anyone had suggested he wanted the government to replace private enterprise in every facet of American life. Obama is doing it at an astounding rate, and claiming it's just helping out troubled corporations. Carter attempted to extend some social security and medical benefits to relatively small segments of society not then covered--and got slapped down by his own party for doing so. Obama proposes to throw over a trillion dollars into universal health care, and nobody in his party even asks where he intends to find the money and who is going to pay for it.

Carter would have loved to know who in the general public was working against his policies. Obama opened a special White House e-mail address to get citizens to report their fellow citizens who were distributing "false information" about his socialist policies. Carter couldn't even get some extra funding for the Peace Corps. But Obama proposes to set up a multi-billion dollar civilian force to push his agenda, and the Democrats go "hmmmm." Carter took some heat for trying to get some youngsters involved in politics by having grants available for them to go into a nebulous public service. He was shot down. Obama cut his teeth on the felonious and leftist ACORN, and when they were caught time and again during and after the election committing one illegal act after another, he didn't disavow them. Instead he got more billions of dollars put into the federal budget to fund ACORN and similar community-organizing cadres. He has used AmeriCorps funds for supporting his agenda, and when his minions were caught doing so, he fired the Inspector General who blew the whistle, then defamed him. Currently he has co-opted the National Endowment for the Arts to work for his "recovery" agenda. Carter couldn't have conceived of such a thing.

In foreign policy, Carter was weak-kneed, but didn't actively support our enemies. Obama undermines our allies and potential allies while embracing or playing neutral with oppressive governments. He had nothing positive to say about the pro-democracy demonstrators in Iran. He has imposed economic and travel sanctions on Honduras because they tossed out an anti-American president who tried to undermine the Honduran constitution. But in the case of Ecuador's leftist president who tried to shake down an American corporation for $27 billion, not a word.

Domestically, Carter tried several "outreach programs" which would get Democratic operatives to glean information on potential voters. He was criticized. Obama has established an immense "data-mining" operation which includes monitoring e-mails and activity on the White House website while gathering names of potential enemies. Carter sported his basic Baptist theology, and invoked Christ and God on regular occasion. Obama informed the entire world that America is not only not a Christian nation, but it is one of the world's largest Muslim nations.

Carter took attacks on him personally and reacted in petty ways. Obama is trained in radical politics, and knows how to use attacks on him to his own advantage. And despite being the first "post-racial" President, he is quick to use the race card to explain why someone might oppose him. And he stood idly by (or was actively involved) in his Attorney General's dismissal of all charges against New Black Panther thugs who had been proven to have threatened and intimidated voters at a Philadelphia polling-place. At the same time, he has allowed the very same Attorney General to pursue damning investigations against CIA operatives over their interrogation techniques which led to the thwarting of at least two major terrorist attacks on American soil.

The millionaire Kennedys actively sabotaged Carter. But their puny millions which were put into the service of Obama pale compared to the money being provided by the gazillionaire America-hating George Soros directly and through his multiple front-organizations such as MoveOn.org. Carter tried to influence and guide the dialog with his known supporters. Obama's team sends out daily talking points to various left-wing organizations such as the Daily Kos and the Huffington Post. Carter was boring. Obama is charismatic.

So this coming Tuesday, when Obama greets American school children nationwide, I want you to consider this. Obama resembles Carter in very few ways. On the other hand he resembles another famous world figure who is shown in the opening illustration on this page being worshipfully attended to by his future supporters (and later victims). Trotsky and the radical social democrats didn't take Josef Stalin seriously and paid dearly for it. And the loving peasants of Soviet Georgia and the Ukraine sang his praises, even as they were starving to death in the many millions from Stalin's policies. After all, how could such a mild, caring leader not love them as much as he claimed to love them? Carter is unlike Obama because Carter wanted to advance his idea of an America that was the best nation on earth. Obama, like Stalin, wants nothing less than government control of every area of American life, and he will do whatever he thinks he can get away with to get it.