President's bus already out of gas
By MICHAEL GOODWINLast Updated: 3:17 AM, August 17, 2011
It's the butt of jokes and has been called a "Magical Mis ery Tour," but President Obama has scored a neat trick with his Midwest bus trip. When he gets home, he can boast to the first lady: Honey, I shrunk the presidency.
That's not what he had in mind, yet it's the only accomplishment of his misbegotten adventure. The highlights are his expensive motorcade rumbling through Iowa corn fields not far from GOP candidates, and stopping so he can squabble with Tea Partiers, propose more taxes, and blame everybody else for everything that's happened on his watch.
Throw in his complaint about a "run of bad luck" and you have the Obummer Odyssey, a bracing reminder of Jimmy Carter's "malaise" moment.
The magic is gone. Obama's campaign team has bared its strategy: attack, attack, attack whomever the GOP nominates. Vote your fears, not your hopes.
But wait -- the president has a plan to create jobs and deal with the debt, the White House declares. Finally, in the 32nd month of his presidency, he's going to show his cards.
Never mind. He has a plan, but will release it next month, the 33rd of his presidency. No "fierce urgency of now" there.
First, he's retreating to another vacation on Martha's Vineyard. No doubt he'll gather his kitchen Cabinet to conjure more ways to separate Americans from their money and each other.
His is a fall from grace that hasn't hit bottom. With 40 percent of the public still approving of his performance, it'll probably take a second recession for truth to dawn on the diehards.
We can shout at each other over whether he's actually up to the job, but not about whether he's willing to make the ideological sacrifices necessary to do it successfully. He is so determined to transform the nation into his own ideal that he's still pushing the same class-warfare nonsense he did three years ago, though now his record makes his aim more obvious.
Although 25 million Americans -- 25 million! -- are in want of a full-time job, our president is stuck in political navel gazing. He has a pronounced fetish for self-reverence and, according to many eyewitness accounts, regards himself as not just the smartest man in every room, but also the only moral one.
Everyone else is compromised and limited, while only he is pure and omniscient. Or so he genuinely seems to believe.
But strip away even that contention, and the facts are still the facts. The world is spinning dangerously out of control and America is edging closer to the abyss by the day. Yet amidst a global crisis of confidence, the chair in the Oval Office is empty, our leader pretending he's engaged and relevant when he's merely aiming to keep his job.
It's the art of pretend, where he would have us believe his bus trip is relevant to all that ails us. It is blatantly a campaign event billed to taxpayers, and that alone diminishes him and the office.
Ah, yes, the campaign. The big news is that new GOP hopeful Rick Perry said something stupid. He claimed it would be "almost treasonous" for the federal reserve to print more money for political purposes and that Texas would treat Chairman Ben Bernanke "pretty ugly."
Stupid for sure. But let's have perspective. Perry's words are only self-destructive, unlike the wreckage of the Obama presidency.
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