So this brings us to the incumbent, President Obama. How are things going as he heads into the last one hundred or so days in office.? One does not have to undertake a massive research project to get a feel for the answer. Yesterday's front page headline in the Star Tribune read, "North Korean [Nuclear] Test A Grave Threat." Maybe President Dub wasn't too far off when he labeled North Korea and Iran the "axis of evil." The pajama-clad lunatic running North Korea, Kim Jong Un, is dangerously unpredictable. And the Iranians enjoy playing war games in the Gulf Of Hormuz, daring our navy to blast them out of the water. It's hard to imagine our president has many waking hours when the threat posed by those two countries does not weigh heavily on his mind.
Speaking of the Iranians,
Obama claims that the $400 million paid by the US to them in January
simultaneously with the release of American hostages was merely a
coincidence, not ransom. Hmm. If so, why cash? I guess the Swiss
banks, which the US usually uses for transactions with countries where
we don't have a commercial relationship, were closed that day.
Within
the last two weeks it has been reported that the US negotiations with
the twenty-eight member European Union regarding free trade (the
Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership, aka TTIP) has gotten
nowhere, despite Canada's success at a similar arrangement with the
EU. Twenty-seven "chapters" of the TTIP have been negotiated between
the US and the EU this year. On how many of those twenty-seven has
agreement been reached? Answer: zero. A subplot to this news is that
the Democrats are the party which is most eager to consummate this
deal. Their stated goal is to put pen to paper by year's end. Good
luck.
Also within the last ten days we've learned that Turkey,
one of our most important NATO allies, is conducting air strikes on the
Kurds in northern Syria. This is, indeed, strange behavior given the
fact that the Kurds' brave battle against ISIS is being militarily
backed by US air strikes, intelligence and tactical advisors. To recap,
our supposed ally is killing the people we have chosen to lead the
ground fight against ISIS in Syria. I thought the US was supposed to be
the most superior military in the world. How do we let Turkey get away
with this? Where is our commander-in-chief? Turkey's leaders, perhaps
a bit paranoid, think the US was behind the failed coup which rocked
their country last month. Vice President Biden even paid a visit to
Turkish President Recep Erdogan to assure him that we were not behind
the coup. That was the wrong primary topic and the wrong primary
message. It's hard to imagine President Reagan dispatching an underling
for that purpose. Biden's message should have been, "Stop bombing our
guys or we won't send you another nickel."
It
is commonly believed that Obama's legacy will greatly hinge on the
continued success of Obamacare. That national health plan almost
terminated out of the shoot when the legality of a key element of the
plan, mandatory purchase of insurance by individuals who may not
otherwise have desired to buy it, was challenged. The plan has managed
to survive for the time being, notwithstanding a thumbs down vote by the
swing voter on the US Supreme Court, Justice Anthony Kennedy. Usually
Kennedy's vote determines the outcome of every case decided by a divided
court. However, Chief Justice John Roberts, perhaps not wanting to go
down in history as the man whose court killed Obamacare, surprisingly
sided with the liberal wing and voted for the constitutional
permissibility of mandatory insurance. Still, warning flags are out
for the future longevity of the president's health coverage plan, which
has generally met with disapproval by small businesses. Spikes in
insurance premiums are prevalent, making it hard for the plan's
supporters to assert that it benefits the middle class. Some families,
upon finding out about their skyrocketing premiums, are opting to pay
the government-imposed fine rather than re-up for the following year.
Several insurers are bailing after losing millions of dollars. If
Donald Trump becomes the next president, putting an end to Obamacare
will be high on his list. No wonder the prez is making time to campaign
for Hillary.
Two of President Obama's personal
decisions made in August have also been severely criticized by his
political opponents. First, while old folks, the infirm and a variety
of household pets were being rescued off of rooftops in severely flooded
Baton Rogue, Louisiana and its environs, the president was playing golf
near Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Days later, when he finally showed up to
survey the disaster area, he said, "I guarantee ya, when help arrives
those flood victims won't care if the provider is a Democrat or a
Republican." Well, yes, that's true; and ice cream has no bones.
But...
Secondly, when given the option to have
his future presidential library built in either of two Chicago South
Side neighborhoods, the impoverished Washington Park, which desperately
could use an infusion of dollars, or Jackson Park, a relatively upscale
area along the Lake Michigan shore, the Chicagoan chose the latter. As
the Republicans were quick to point out, there is a difference between
talking the talk and walking the walk.
While we're on Chicago, the Windy City is on a course to be the scene of over 800
homicides this calendar year. As of September 1, more murders had been
committed in Chicago, the nation's third largest city, than in New York
(largest) and Los Angeles (second largest) combined. Who is running the
show in the City Of Big Shoulders? It's Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who was
picked by Obama eight years ago to be his first Chief of Staff. Is it
fair to link the president with the failed mayor? I would say "no," but
then again who claims politics is fair? Emanuel's time at Obama's
right hand were often, shall we say, less than pleasant, and there were
not a whole lot of insiders who were sorry to see him leave for his
current position.
What about the president's
secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton? Even the FBI Director, James Comey,
who was appointed by Obama, called Clinton's intentional security lapses
"extremely careless." Yet, in a head-scratching conclusion, after
laying out the facts regarding Clinton's disregard for the law which
arguably imperiled (among others) our military, he chose not to charge
her with a crime. My take: Just as was the case with the
aforementioned Chief Justice Roberts, Comey did not want to be the guy
who would be responsible for such a major impact on the course of
history, i.e., the withdrawal of a major party's presidential nominee
from the November ballots. With President Harry Truman, who, by the
way, was a Democrat, the buck stopped at his desk. Does that platitude
hold water with the Obama administration? And since I'm asking that
question, how have the veterans, especially those depending on the
Veterans' Administration for their medical needs, been faring under the
Obama regime?
Perhaps trumping -- no pun
intended -- all other issues is the question of how President Obama
performed as commander-in-chief. I believe it was in the Washington
Post where I read that when Obama took office the United States was at
war in nine countries, meaning that's how many countries in which we
either had ground troops (including special forces) stationed in the
line of fire or we were supplying air support to allies' ground troops.
That number has grown to fourteen during the last eight years, a
reflection of how violent and dangerous the world has become. That
growth is also a reflection of how important the role of
commander-in-chief of our military has become.
As
a sports fan, I can't help but notice how a pitcher will usually put
his glove to his mouth so that lip readers can't decipher what he's
saying to his catcher. Same thing in football, where the coaches use
their play sheet as a shield to obscure what they are saying into their
headset microphone. If that is smart protocol for something as
unimportant as baseball or football, why is it not so important when the
lives of thousands of American troops are at stake? Here is what
Commander-in-Chief Obama said on October 21, 2011: "I can report that,
as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of
the year. After nearly nine years, America's war in Iraq will be
over." Unbelievably, two and a-half years later, Obama made the same
mistake when, on May 26, 2014, he announced that he would order the
withdrawal of all American troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
Nothing like tipping your hand! Many foreign affairs experts attribute
the rise of ISIS in Iraq, if not the emboldened continued presence of
the Taliban in Afghanistan, to Obama's disclosures. The bad guys lied
in the weeds until the US presence was drastically diminished, then
having only the woefully inept local national armies to deal with.
There is an old saying that the reason we study history is so we don't
repeat the mistakes of the past. Of course, Obama comes from a
background of constitutional law and community organizing, not military strategy. Still, I
thought he, too, was a sports fan who twice should have known better.
