Styrofoam Columns Set in Sand

or Why Obama is a One-Term President



Barack Obama was elected largely in reaction to the perceived inadequacies of George W Bush; in other words, He speaks well and gives people the Pablum that goes down easily: world peace, the rosy assumption that the rest of the world "is just like us", be nice to our enemies and they'll be nice in return (such as closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, unilateral disarmament, and disarming the Patriot Act), big government programs so no one has to worry about anything, government management of the country via appointed "Czars", curbing the perceived excesses of corporate management, an approach to appointments where affirmative action trumps ability -- in short, all things that most 6th graders would reflexively agree were good ideas. This is why 6th graders don't vote, but it pretty well describes the Obama voter -- the wide-eyed innocent who can't or hasn't thought through the long-term consequences of what Obama is pushing, with little understanding of how the world works or has worked in the past, or the arrogance to think that He can make it work for the first time in human history.

Obama cannot be re-elected without these people. When He finds (as He is now finding) that the fine-sounding pap He fed them to get elected runs afoul of the real world, and He cannot avoid going back on His campaign promises, these simple creatures will feel betrayed and will turn on Him, as many are now doing. I mean, didn't He say we'd be out of Iraq within some ridiculously short period of time only someone unfamiliar with reality would buy? And damn! Closing the Guantanamo prison has consequences that appear to have been too arcane for the Obama voter. And is it true that His government health insurance scheme won't go into effect until He has left office, thus letting Him lay at the door of His successor the inevitable chaos that will ensue?



As a side note, I love the use of Medicare as an example of how government health insurance has worked. Medicare is the single biggest reason health care costs are so high now. Do we punch another hole in the bottom of the boat to let out the water coming in thru the first one?


Those who had their eyes open during the campaign, who realized He was simply promising what he had to to obtain the votes of those who had no idea what was going on (and probably shouldn't be allowed to vote), will never vote for Him. As the next election draws nearer, Obama will be torn between doing what is clearly the right thing for the country, and saying and doing what will, once again, obtain the votes of those who still don't get it. If He chooses the latter, the disasterous consequences will, by then, be all too apparent. And for his starry -eyed worshippers, enough of those will have become alienated by His unfulfilled promises that he will lose.



There is precedent for this throughout US history: Thomas Jefferson was elected largely because John Adams was perceived as too tough on foreign policy, having almost brought the country to war with France in 1798. As Secretary of State under Adams, Jefferson has opposed any build-up of the navy as provocative and wasteful. In those days, the size of a nation's navy was indicative of it's foreign policy. Just so any Obama voters reading this will understand, building up the Air Force was not really an option at this point. So when the Tripolitan Pirates began attacking US merchant shipping in the Mediterranean (as you recall, the US had voluntarily given up the protection of the Royal Navy), and the pirates wouldn't be nice to us just because we were nice to them, the only effective response was naval (Commodore Bainbridge, Presley O'Bannon, and Stephen Decatur were sent "To the Shores of Tripoli" -- isn't there a song in there somewhere?). Little remembered is that the terms of release of the American seamen still required the payment of $60,000 each to the Dey of Algiers.



The Jefferson Administration had an isolationist undertone to it, and was certainly domestically focused (Louisiana Purchase, Lewis & Clark, etc). The weakness of the Jeffersonian Navy encouraged the impressment of American sailors by the navies of England and France during the first decade of the 19th Century, which led directly to the election of James Madison and American involvement in the Napoleonic Wars, known here as the War of 1812. In Jefferson's defense, the idea at the time was that if England declared war, the US could actually build a navy before the Royal one arrived. To disprove that, see White House burning at right.



But the underlying point is that the foreign policy weakness of the Jefferson navy led directly to US involvement in the War of 1812.



There are other examples of the downside of a weak President, or at least one who, to get elected, caters to the naivete of those with little understanding of how the world works. Remember Jimmy Carter? A very smart guy, but certainly the weakest US President in the 20th Century. The latter half of the 19th Century had some weak Presidents too, but small government was the norm then and the effects were masked.



Carter's approach to foreign policy was based upon the false premise that our enemies operated on the same paradigm that we do, and would honor the agreements we made with them. Also assumed was that if we are just nice to them, they will be nice to us -- hold hands in a circle, pass a joint around, sing a few stanzas of Kumbaya, and everything will be fine. Go ahead and give them what they want, because they've agreed to do what we asked. This is seen as nothing but weakness and stupidity by our enemies who, once they have what they want on this round, have no intention of honoring their end of the agreement, and this perceived weakness got us the Iran Hostage Crisis and Russian invasion of Afghanistan.



Clinton had some Carter in him, as demonstrated by the stupid "Framework Agreement" with North Korea and the equally dumb Kyoto Protocol, which was made even dumber by the implicit and, to be kind, highly dubious assumption that man is causing global warming (see Global Warming Thru the Ages on this Blog).



So Obama is a one term President because being a good speaker only gets you to first base. It's kind of like a Ponzi Scheme, so much in the news lately: it's all great in the beginning, but eventually the cumulative weight of the deceit upon which it is built, causes the whole thing to come crashing down.