Barack Obama’s Lazy America. The world’s worst cheerleader shakes his pom-poms.
Human Events ^ | 11-15-11 | John Hayward
For some reason, Barack Obama has decided that part of his path to re-election will involve blaming his failures on the American people, who can be insulted into loving him again. This narrative involves convincing us that the American spirit was so degenerate by 2008 that not even the dazzling skills of the LIghtworker could save us… at least, not in a mere four years.
In September, Obama declared that it was his unhappy duty to preside over “a great, great country that has gotten a little soft, and we didn’t have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades” during an interview in Orlando. Then it was off to San Francisco, where he told the audience at one of his endless big-bucks campaign fundraisers that “we have lost our ambition, our imagination, and our willingness to do the things that built the Golden Gate Bridge and Hoover Dam.”
Last weekend Obama was at it again, taking time away from golf with an old friend who was busted on prostitution charges to tell a gathering of business executives that he’s still very disappointed in the sloth of the unworthy nation that has been making him look bad, by failing to live up to his expectations. As related by ABC News:
Obama told a group of CEOs today that the United States has gotten “lazy” and that America lost its hunger in promoting itself in a global marketplace.
“We’ve been a little bit lazy over the last couple of decades. We’ve kind of taken for granted — ‘Well, people would want to come here’ — and we aren’t out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new businesses into America,” he told the CEOs who are gathered on the sidelines of the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings, which the United States is hosting this year in Hawaii.
“I think it’s important to remember that the United States is still the largest recipient of foreign investment in the world and there are a lot of things that make foreign investors see the U.S. as a great opportunity — our stability, our openness, our innovative free market culture,” he said.
The Daily Caller relays a sharp response from conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer:
“No one is asking him to go out there and to be a jingoistic cheerleader,” Krauthammer said. “But when you call your own country ‘lazy’ when you are abroad, and call it ‘unambitious and soft’ when you are home, I think what you are showing is not tough love, but ill-conceived, ill-concealed contempt.”
Krauthammer then blamed Obama, rather than the American people, for the poor state of the economy.
“Look: Why are people reluctant to invest?” he asked. “We have the highest corporate tax rate in the world — in the industrialized world. Obama has spoken about it. It’s the one issue on which the Republicans would have agreed on lowering that rate, eliminating the loopholes. And in three years in office, he has done nothing.”
Krauthamer also directed blame toward the National Labor Relations Board, charging the agency with “trying to shut down a $1 billion plant that was constructed as a favor to Obama union allies.”
“People look abroad and say, ‘This isn’t a place I want to do business,’” Krauthammer huffed. ”It’s his issues, his overregulation, over-taxation and all the red tape he has added. And now he blames Americans’ laziness? I think it’s unseemly.”
