By Jonathan E.P. Moore
CAN HILLARY’S CONTINUATION OF OBAMA’S DEFINITION OF ‘CHANGE’ WIN IN 2016, OR WILL THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WAKE UP AND CARE?
America is waking up today just a little hung over from the past 8 years of wanting to forget what this country, under this Obama administration, has turned into! How did we get to a place in the world where America is not only being disrespected but a joke, and being laughed at by both our ally’s, and enemy’s? The answer is simple and you probably, like a lot of the morning after binges, don’t remember how you got here and about the damage you created!
Well let me make it simple to understand, ‘You voted for Barack Obama, and not only once, but twice based on his promise of change! I bet you couldn’t even tell me what Obama’s definition of change was and how it has affected the foundation of what America stands for in the world and at home! Don't forget also how the 'Paid to Report' Media didn't lend a guiding hand, which to me is pretty predictable, and par for the course!
Do you ever get the idea that this nation is not only in decline but completely rudderless under the Obama administration? Well, it's not really rudderless; it only appears rudderless because Obama isn't pursuing the same goals as past presidents.
Let's first concede that Obama expressly admitted his goal of fundamentally changing the nation — an alarming thought to most patriots.
Let's also acknowledge that Obama's perception of pre-Obama America is largely negative. He has made that abundantly clear during the past eight years, with his incessant harping on the state of the African-American community, his articulation of class warfare themes, his virtually overt war on our domestic energy industries and his harsh criticism of American health care, the insurance industry, the "wealthy" and various other targets.
By pitting Americans against each other, he produces both the distraction and the fuel to facilitate his goal of fundamental change.
Neither he nor his like-minded leftist colleagues look to America's founding with pride. They regard America's international record as unacceptably imperialistic, and they still believe we are on the wrong side of history on civil rights and other issues.
Though it has taken some a long while to come to terms with Obama's radicalism — and it would be an understatement to label it as anything less — many are finally opening their eyes to it, and don't expect anything to change under a Hillary continuation of Obama's policies!
Only if we fully come to grips with the sincerity of Obama's goal of fundamental transformation will we have the proper context within which to evaluate his policies.
By seeking transformational change, Obama does not mean that he wants to return unemployment and economic growth to their traditional levels. He doesn't mean that he wants to ensure that America remains the world's lone superpower, committed to defending itself and its allies and to opposing radical jihadis in the war on terror!
He has shown that he doesn't necessarily even share these domestic and foreign policy goals or that if he does, they are far down on his list of priorities.
Obama cannot be completely candid about his goals, because even today, most Americans would probably oppose his ideas if they fully understood them. He gives us many hints about where he's ultimately headed, but he also remains vague and cloaks his goals in euphemisms of "fairness" and "equality," by which he means something entirely different from America's traditional commitment to equality of opportunity and equality under the law. He means moving toward equality of outcomes to achieve "fairness."
If Obama were like other presidents, he would at least be alarmed by the enormousness of the national debt and the entitlements that are driving our unfunded liabilities into the stratosphere. He would be concerned that the economy has remained anemic his entire eight years in office and that we're experiencing the worst recovery since World War II.
But you never hear Obama expressing genuine concern over the debt, our unfunded liabilities, our perpetual lack of growth or the explosion of our welfare and food stamp programs, which he may well regard with pride.
Why? Because his head is elsewhere. He wants the welfare state to thrive because that is one of the most efficient ways to achieve his desired income redistributions. He does not concern himself over growth-stifling tax increases, because he is more interested in confiscating income and assets of those he perceives as having too much.
He isn't worried about the colossally negative impact his quixotic green energy programs have on our economy and livelihood, because he is more interested in achieving his goal of fundamental transformation than in presiding over a robust American economy.
He isn't worried about the expansion of government and the unaccountable administrative bureaucracy, because to him, government is the panacea and "liberty" is merely a word to mouth when expedient.
To give himself cover for implementing fundamental change, Obama has been not only preaching "fairness" but deliberately lowering Americans' expectations for future growth. He has attempted to reorient people to accept the currently unacceptable levels of economic performance as the new norm.
Sadly, Obama's idea of reallocation of resources doesn't stop at the nation's shores. Just as he wants a "fairer" allocation of resources in this country, he wants our relative power in the world to be diminished, as well. He's all but admitted he isn't comfortable with America's being the world's sole superpower.
We've discussed the bizarre phenomenon of Obama's avoiding accountability for his miserable record by distancing himself from the negative effects of his own policies. His ability to escape accountability is further served by the fact that he doesn't aspire to the same goals as other presidents and thus eludes some measure of blame for failing to achieve them.
What is going on in this nation is breathtaking to those who love America as founded and as embodying the greatest principles of self-governance in world history.
If we are to have any hope of rolling some of this insanity back in the short term and ultimately preventing Obama's goal of fundamental change, we must, at the very least, call Obama out on exactly what he's doing and do our best to re-establish the traditional yardsticks against which to measure his failures. ~~ ('Implications of Fundamental Change' ~~By David Limbaugh)
OBAMA: TRANSFORMING AMERICA!
"We are just five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” — Barack Obama, October 30, 2008.
“We are going to have to change our conversation; we’re going to have to change our traditions, our history; we’re going to have to move into a different place as a nation.” — Michelle Obama, May 14, 2008.
There certainly is no question that Barack Obama has tried, and in some cases succeeded to change the United States. And there clearly is no doubt that such fundamental transformation is difficult, given our tripartite system of government — even though Obama entered office with large Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, an enthralled media, and a closely divided Supreme Court.
So to what degree, after nearly eight years in office, has Obama succeeded in changing the United States?
FEDERAL SPENDING: We are $10 trillion more deeply in debt. And there are record numbers of Americans on food stamps, unemployment insurance, and disability insurance, or simply disengaged from the work force. Obama has also fundamentally changed Americans’ ideas about the redistributive state.
Whereas, under Clinton and Bush, the argument centered on whether federal subsidies eroded the work ethic, created dependency, and led to a permanent underclass, now the discussion is quite transformed beyond the safety net. Fairly or not, Obama is seen as expanding entitlements in part as a political tool, quite apart from the question of their efficacy in eliminating poverty.
The problem is not just that his critics accuse Obama of trying to create a permanent constituency, a loyal “47 percent” dependent on state money, but rather the way in which Obama himself envisions these programs as reminders of his them/us fault lines. After 2009, the regulations governing food stamps and welfare were liberalized and politicized as never before. These payouts were judged not just on whether they hurt or helped people, but also, in the Greek and Roman sense, of increasing the number of recipients so as to change political realities.
TAXES AND DEBT: Democrats usually wish to raise them, Republicans to shrink them. Nothing new there. But under Obama, there is now a twist. Higher taxes are not a means to achieve a balanced budget, as under the Clinton-Gingrich deal of 1997. Indeed, the return of a 39 percent–plus federal income-tax rate on higher incomes will result not in a balanced budget as before (even with congressionally imposed sequestration). We will still have huge annual deficits of two-thirds of a trillion dollars or more.
Because nearly half of Americans will continue to pay no federal income taxes, and the old Clinton rates were imposed only on the upper brackets, we have the worst of both worlds: high taxes on job creators, along with continuing huge deficits.
That paradox raises the question of whether
Obama sees deficits not just as necessary to prime the economy, or as a
tolerable consequence of huge increases in federal spending, but also as a
mechanism to serially raise taxes on the upper brackets, as a desirable
redistributive end in and of itself. Taxes are seen now not just as a way to
fund expenditures, but as a punitive tool — hence the new phraseology of 1
percent, fat cats, corporate-jet owners, you did not build that, no time to profit,
at some point you’ve made enough money, etc. A more equal but poorer America
appears to be preferable to a more affluent but less equal nation.
HEALTH CARE: Little need be said about Obamacare, an orphan now disowned by most of its parents. The purpose of this vast new entitlement was not to ensure all Americans better health care (if it had been, then pro-Obama business owners, unions, and congressional staffers would have wanted in), but instead a sort of health-care TSA bureaucracy, with more dependents, more federal workers, and higher redistributive taxes — in short, larger government.
INTEREST RATES: Ostensibly, de facto zero interest rates are used as a stimulus for a moribund economy that so far seems oblivious to all the traditional liberal priming tools of massive borrowing, growth in federal spending, and more entitlements and public hiring. Yet almost nonexistent interest rates have sharpened the class divide. The very wealthy have benefited enormously as capital streamed into the stock market in desperate search of almost any return. The very poor do not depend on interest on savings as a hedge against inflation or as central to retirement.
That leaves the middle class, who so far have not felt the upside of zero interest rates — the interest on their credit-card debt remains sky-high, their student loans are steep, and their mortgage interest for the most part is not all that low. The banks loan at high interest and pay almost nothing on deposits; Wall Street welcomes in cash without much worry about competition to produce returns; and the poor are the beneficiaries of the vast federal borrowing that goes some way toward explaining why interest rates cannot climb, given that servicing the ever-rising federal debt would become almost unsustainable.
THE PRESIDENCY: An imperial presidency is not new. But rule by executive fiat that escapes audit from the media is. We live in an age when a president can arbitrarily nullify a law, like Obamacare’s employer mandate; ignore it, like the Defense of Marriage Act; or simply create it, as with partial blanket amnesties. Various wars — on coal, guns, non-union businesses, and political opponents — are waged by executive action. For now, the logic is that the president’s means are justified by the exalted ends that he professes. Obama has set the precedent of a president creating, ignoring, or defying laws as he sees fit to forward a progressive agenda.
SCANDAL: Bill Clinton gave us plenty of scandals; but, as in the case of the Nixon administration, the media galvanized public attention to the danger of a sometimes lawless administration. But whether it is the Benghazi deception, the IRS scandal, the NSA disclosures, the AP monitoring, or Fast and Furious, a new precedent has been established that the public is supposed to weigh two considerations in assessing scandal: the truth versus the damage that the truth can do to a progressive vision of a fairer America. So far the truth has lost.
POLITICS: In his political style, Obama seems to operate on the medieval concept of exemption. Through lofty spoken abstractions, he excuses low behavior. Praising “civility” allows you to call your opponents veritable terrorists; talk of unity means energizing supporters to get in their opponents’ face; advocacy of a campaign of principles reduces Romney to a veritable ogre. Plenty of presidents have proved vicious, but few so adepts in attributing their own base behavior to others. Damning fat cats and corporate-jet owners allows a president to hold serial $50,000-a-head fundraisers. Ridiculing Romney’s elevator seems to make vacationing in Aspen, Costa del Sol, Vail, and Martha’s Vineyard perfectly natural.
ENERGY: Before Obama, natural gas and nuclear power were seen as preferable alternatives to oil and coal. If new restrictions on reactors and a de facto end to the new federal leasing of land for oil and gas exploration are any indication, neither energy source is now acceptable. Had Obama opened up federal lands for fracking and horizontal drilling, built the Keystone Pipeline, and encouraged natural gas as a transportation tool, power bills would not have climbed and gasoline prices would not have doubled. The U.S. would have enjoyed an even brighter energy future than what private enterprise alone has provided.
OBAMA’S VIEW OF ENERGY: Whether we cite former energy secretary Steven Chu’s lunacy on the desirability of raising U.S. gasoline prices to European levels, or candidate Obama’s own promises to bankrupt coal companies — is elitist to the core. His signature energy achievement is to change the terms of the debate: The chief energy issues for the Obama administration are not national security, not energy independence, not greater competitiveness for American business, not savings for the American consumer, and not jobs. Instead, whether a fuel might heat the atmosphere seems the sole concern.
RACE: Had Condoleezza Rice or Colin Powell been elected president; race would have been incidental rather than essential to their governance. Nothing in Barack Obama’s past suggests that such a statement could ever have been true of his presidency.
From the beer summit to “punish our enemies” to the two occasions of pop editorializing about Trayvon Martin, and from Eric Holder’s “my people” to “nation of cowards,” the Obama administration has sought at opportune times to emphasize racial differences, mostly to secure the base for Obama’s own reelection and for midterm elections.
The result is that race relations have become more polarized than at any other time in the last 30 years. Under Obama’s leadership, celebrities, political analysts, and politicians traffic more in racial animus than at any other time in our recent history. Obama has had an uncanny ability to energize the Black Caucus to voice unusually inflammatory charges. How did it happen that suddenly Chris Rock and Jamie Foxx sound racially biased? When did the post-election commentary of pundits (e.g., “too old, too white, too male”) become so race-based?
FROM THE TRIVAL: — dropping his g’s and clumsily transforming his cadences — to the fundamental — weighing in on mediis rebus on pending court cases — the president’s goal has often been division, not unity. We have reached a surreal situation of reading daily accounts of black-on-white crime in the media, reported by politically correct journalists who dare not mention the perpetrator’s race, followed by enraged readers’ comments that are the most patently racist in modern memory.
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: Before Obama, the debate over illegal immigration was mostly an argument between two schools that transcended politics and ideology: literalists who believed the law had to be enforced to its full extent, postfacto as well as preventatively, and realists who agreed in theory but felt that many of the 11 million who resided illegally in the U.S. could be given a pathway to citizenship, so long as they have no criminal record, have avoided public assistance, and could claim long residence — contingent on closing the border,
Not now. Under Obama, illegal immigration has become a political if not a racially charged issue. Supporters of blanket amnesty saw an evolving demographic process of fundamentally transforming the electorate of the American Southwest, resonating with Obama’s own unfortunate lead, as in his advice to Latinos to “punish our enemies.” Perhaps this vision was best summarized by ACORN’s former CEO, Bertha Lewis. She recently urged African-Americans to support increased immigration on the following rationale: “We got some Latino cousins, we got some Asian cousins, we got some Native-American cousins, we got all kind of cousins. . .. Cousins need to get together, because if we’re going to be [part of the non-white] majority, it makes sense for black people in this country to get down with immigration reform. . .. Everyone, even all white folks in this country, acknowledge that in a minute, [the] United States of America will be a new majority, will be majority minority, a brand-new thing. . .. For the first time ever in history, African-Americans outvoted white Americans. Pooh. That’s the fear of the white man. That could change everything. That’s why [immigration] should matter to us.”
FOREIGN POLICY: What is the common theme to the euphemisms about terrorism and radical Islam, the failed reset with Russia, withdrawal from Iraq, confusion in Afghanistan, lead-from-behind in Libya, pink lines and pseudo– “game changers” in Syria, the faux deadlines with Iran, mesmerization with Turkey, peace feelers to Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela, as well as the rhetorical tropes found in the Cairo speech, the U.N. addresses, and the Al-Arabiya interview?
Just as, in Obama’s worldview, the 1 percent exercise undue influence in the United States, so too abroad America has exercised exceptional power and influence that either are not warranted by its traditions and history, or do not contribute to stability and social justice in the world at large. Fundamentally transforming the role of the U.S. means tilting toward countries that are suspicious of the Western tradition, and favoring groups and countries like Turkey, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Palestinians that have supposedly legitimate grievances against the United States. The goal? Probably, the transformation of the U.S. into something like the EU, whose democratic socialism is manifested abroad with soft-power lectures, and who's open borders are making the EU regret and reconsider that big mistake as witnessed by Britain’s departure from the EU, and the unspoken horrors brought on by the Syrian refugee crisis throughout the region!!
GUNS: There is no new restrictive legislation on firearms; and yet never has the ability to buy reasonably priced ammunition and firearms in quantity been more accessible and desired. In loudly threatening to enact more gun control after each publicized tragic shooting, the Obama administration has created a climate of fear, which has prompted hoarding, shortages, panic buying, and paranoia, which have accomplished what the federal government could not.
To what degree these changes will be reversed or institutionalized depends on the 2016 election. For now, Obama’s transformations are not to be found only in his legislative record, but far more in his use of the presidency to change the way we envision and talk about America.
HOW'S THAT FUNDAMENTAL TRANSFORMATION GOING? ~~Michael Barone
When Air Force One landed in China last week for the G-20 Summit, Chinese authorities didn't wheel out the usual staircase for the president to disembark. Instead he had to exit through an opening in the back of the enormous aircraft. It was, you might say, a pivot to Asia.
That wasn't the last insult Barack Obama absorbed in Hangzhou. The president of the Philippines, long considered a U.S. ally, called him a name family publication usually don't print. It's rare for an American president to be treated with such contempt. It's what happens when you draw red lines and do nothing when people step over them.
When Barack Obama promised to "fundamentally (transform) the United States of America," this is probably not what he had in mind. But like the much-talked-about pivot to Asia, his two most transformational policy initiatives, as identified by his foreign policy staffer Ben Rhodes -- Obamacare at home and the Iran nuclear deal abroad -- have had disappointing results.
Consider Obamacare. "Insurers are pulling out of the exchanges and premiums are rising," as Bloomberg's Megan McArdle writes. Fewer people are uninsured, but mostly because they're shoved into bare bones Medicaid-type plans, which some studies indicate don't improve health outcomes. We may be seeing death spirals, with higher premiums making healthy people drop coverage until only the very sick buy policies.
One reason for Obamacare's problems is that it was jammed through Congress in defiance of public opinion and contrary to legislative regular order. The public, speaking through the unlikely medium of the voters of Massachusetts, made clear their views when Scott Brown won a January 2010 special election after promising to cast a decisive vote against Obamacare.
That left Democrats with no ideal options. In December, the Senate, with Democrats' 60-vote supermajority, had passed a placeholder measure with plenty of wrinkles to be ironed out. With the 60th vote gone, their options were to jam that bill through a reluctant House or to drop back and negotiate with Republicans on a more limited alternative.
Politicians have to act without the luxury of knowing the future. Barack Obama, at the urging of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, decided to push ahead, in the hopes that after the bill was passed and (as Pelosi said) people learned what was in it, it would be popular. Don't people always want more free stuff?
Not necessarily, it turns out. Obamacare has been tested in hundreds of polls since it became law in March 2010. In just about every one, pluralities and usually majorities have expressed negative feelings about the law. That helped Republicans win majorities in the House in 2010, 2012 and 2014, majorities unwilling to change the law in ways Democrats would like.
Obama's gamble that the law would work as he hoped and promised has failed to date. Health insurance markets and health care delivery have been transformed, but not fundamentally and not sustainably. Mark him incomplete, at best.
Incomplete is also the best mark conceivable for Obama's other attempt at fundamental transformation, the Iran nuclear deal. It's part of his basic approach of spurning traditional allies and courting traditional enemies.
Sometimes this works: Friends stay friendly; enemies change course. But Iran's mullah regime has certainly not done so to date. In lengthy negotiations it extracted concession after concession Obama and John Kerry said they'd never make. They even got secret approval of transfers --in cash -- of at least $400 million and apparently $1.3 billion more.
It's plain, however, that Iran's extremists have not given up on their goal of obtaining nuclear weapons, deliverable to Israel, India, Europe and maybe beyond. The best the deal's defenders can say is that it delays the process.
The Iran deal lacked and lacks majority support from the public and in Congress. To prevent a congressional veto, Obama Democrats pushed through an unusual procedure, which reversed the constitutional requirement of two-thirds Senate approval for treaties. Now it just needed one-third.
But all signs are that Iran remains an obdurate enemy, supporting terrorists and spreading its influence in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and the Gulf. America's traditional friends in the region are looking for other sources of support.
That seems the case in Asia as well. The Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, intended to bolster America's regional lead role, now looks dead, as both major-party presidential nominees oppose it. Which leaves Obama, who never pressed the deal hard with his own party, scampering out of the back of his plane. Some fundamental transformation.
CAN HILLARY’S CONTINUATION OF OBAMA’S DEFINITION OF ‘CHANGE’ WIN IN 2016, OR WILL THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WAKE UP AND CARE?
America is waking up today just a little hung over from the past 8 years of wanting to forget what this country, under this Obama administration, has turned into! How did we get to a place in the world where America is not only being disrespected but a joke, and being laughed at by both our ally’s, and enemy’s? The answer is simple and you probably, like a lot of the morning after binges, don’t remember how you got here and about the damage you created!
Well let me make it simple to understand, ‘You voted for Barack Obama, and not only once, but twice based on his promise of change! I bet you couldn’t even tell me what Obama’s definition of change was and how it has affected the foundation of what America stands for in the world and at home! Don't forget also how the 'Paid to Report' Media didn't lend a guiding hand, which to me is pretty predictable, and par for the course!
Do you ever get the idea that this nation is not only in decline but completely rudderless under the Obama administration? Well, it's not really rudderless; it only appears rudderless because Obama isn't pursuing the same goals as past presidents.
Let's first concede that Obama expressly admitted his goal of fundamentally changing the nation — an alarming thought to most patriots.
Let's also acknowledge that Obama's perception of pre-Obama America is largely negative. He has made that abundantly clear during the past eight years, with his incessant harping on the state of the African-American community, his articulation of class warfare themes, his virtually overt war on our domestic energy industries and his harsh criticism of American health care, the insurance industry, the "wealthy" and various other targets.
By pitting Americans against each other, he produces both the distraction and the fuel to facilitate his goal of fundamental change.
Neither he nor his like-minded leftist colleagues look to America's founding with pride. They regard America's international record as unacceptably imperialistic, and they still believe we are on the wrong side of history on civil rights and other issues.
Though it has taken some a long while to come to terms with Obama's radicalism — and it would be an understatement to label it as anything less — many are finally opening their eyes to it, and don't expect anything to change under a Hillary continuation of Obama's policies!
Only if we fully come to grips with the sincerity of Obama's goal of fundamental transformation will we have the proper context within which to evaluate his policies.
By seeking transformational change, Obama does not mean that he wants to return unemployment and economic growth to their traditional levels. He doesn't mean that he wants to ensure that America remains the world's lone superpower, committed to defending itself and its allies and to opposing radical jihadis in the war on terror!
He has shown that he doesn't necessarily even share these domestic and foreign policy goals or that if he does, they are far down on his list of priorities.
Obama cannot be completely candid about his goals, because even today, most Americans would probably oppose his ideas if they fully understood them. He gives us many hints about where he's ultimately headed, but he also remains vague and cloaks his goals in euphemisms of "fairness" and "equality," by which he means something entirely different from America's traditional commitment to equality of opportunity and equality under the law. He means moving toward equality of outcomes to achieve "fairness."
If Obama were like other presidents, he would at least be alarmed by the enormousness of the national debt and the entitlements that are driving our unfunded liabilities into the stratosphere. He would be concerned that the economy has remained anemic his entire eight years in office and that we're experiencing the worst recovery since World War II.
But you never hear Obama expressing genuine concern over the debt, our unfunded liabilities, our perpetual lack of growth or the explosion of our welfare and food stamp programs, which he may well regard with pride.
Why? Because his head is elsewhere. He wants the welfare state to thrive because that is one of the most efficient ways to achieve his desired income redistributions. He does not concern himself over growth-stifling tax increases, because he is more interested in confiscating income and assets of those he perceives as having too much.
He isn't worried about the colossally negative impact his quixotic green energy programs have on our economy and livelihood, because he is more interested in achieving his goal of fundamental transformation than in presiding over a robust American economy.
He isn't worried about the expansion of government and the unaccountable administrative bureaucracy, because to him, government is the panacea and "liberty" is merely a word to mouth when expedient.
To give himself cover for implementing fundamental change, Obama has been not only preaching "fairness" but deliberately lowering Americans' expectations for future growth. He has attempted to reorient people to accept the currently unacceptable levels of economic performance as the new norm.
Sadly, Obama's idea of reallocation of resources doesn't stop at the nation's shores. Just as he wants a "fairer" allocation of resources in this country, he wants our relative power in the world to be diminished, as well. He's all but admitted he isn't comfortable with America's being the world's sole superpower.
We've discussed the bizarre phenomenon of Obama's avoiding accountability for his miserable record by distancing himself from the negative effects of his own policies. His ability to escape accountability is further served by the fact that he doesn't aspire to the same goals as other presidents and thus eludes some measure of blame for failing to achieve them.
What is going on in this nation is breathtaking to those who love America as founded and as embodying the greatest principles of self-governance in world history.
If we are to have any hope of rolling some of this insanity back in the short term and ultimately preventing Obama's goal of fundamental change, we must, at the very least, call Obama out on exactly what he's doing and do our best to re-establish the traditional yardsticks against which to measure his failures. ~~ ('Implications of Fundamental Change' ~~By David Limbaugh)
OBAMA: TRANSFORMING AMERICA!
"We are just five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” — Barack Obama, October 30, 2008.
“We are going to have to change our conversation; we’re going to have to change our traditions, our history; we’re going to have to move into a different place as a nation.” — Michelle Obama, May 14, 2008.
There certainly is no question that Barack Obama has tried, and in some cases succeeded to change the United States. And there clearly is no doubt that such fundamental transformation is difficult, given our tripartite system of government — even though Obama entered office with large Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, an enthralled media, and a closely divided Supreme Court.
So to what degree, after nearly eight years in office, has Obama succeeded in changing the United States?
FEDERAL SPENDING: We are $10 trillion more deeply in debt. And there are record numbers of Americans on food stamps, unemployment insurance, and disability insurance, or simply disengaged from the work force. Obama has also fundamentally changed Americans’ ideas about the redistributive state.
Whereas, under Clinton and Bush, the argument centered on whether federal subsidies eroded the work ethic, created dependency, and led to a permanent underclass, now the discussion is quite transformed beyond the safety net. Fairly or not, Obama is seen as expanding entitlements in part as a political tool, quite apart from the question of their efficacy in eliminating poverty.
The problem is not just that his critics accuse Obama of trying to create a permanent constituency, a loyal “47 percent” dependent on state money, but rather the way in which Obama himself envisions these programs as reminders of his them/us fault lines. After 2009, the regulations governing food stamps and welfare were liberalized and politicized as never before. These payouts were judged not just on whether they hurt or helped people, but also, in the Greek and Roman sense, of increasing the number of recipients so as to change political realities.
TAXES AND DEBT: Democrats usually wish to raise them, Republicans to shrink them. Nothing new there. But under Obama, there is now a twist. Higher taxes are not a means to achieve a balanced budget, as under the Clinton-Gingrich deal of 1997. Indeed, the return of a 39 percent–plus federal income-tax rate on higher incomes will result not in a balanced budget as before (even with congressionally imposed sequestration). We will still have huge annual deficits of two-thirds of a trillion dollars or more.
Because nearly half of Americans will continue to pay no federal income taxes, and the old Clinton rates were imposed only on the upper brackets, we have the worst of both worlds: high taxes on job creators, along with continuing huge deficits.
HEALTH CARE: Little need be said about Obamacare, an orphan now disowned by most of its parents. The purpose of this vast new entitlement was not to ensure all Americans better health care (if it had been, then pro-Obama business owners, unions, and congressional staffers would have wanted in), but instead a sort of health-care TSA bureaucracy, with more dependents, more federal workers, and higher redistributive taxes — in short, larger government.
INTEREST RATES: Ostensibly, de facto zero interest rates are used as a stimulus for a moribund economy that so far seems oblivious to all the traditional liberal priming tools of massive borrowing, growth in federal spending, and more entitlements and public hiring. Yet almost nonexistent interest rates have sharpened the class divide. The very wealthy have benefited enormously as capital streamed into the stock market in desperate search of almost any return. The very poor do not depend on interest on savings as a hedge against inflation or as central to retirement.
That leaves the middle class, who so far have not felt the upside of zero interest rates — the interest on their credit-card debt remains sky-high, their student loans are steep, and their mortgage interest for the most part is not all that low. The banks loan at high interest and pay almost nothing on deposits; Wall Street welcomes in cash without much worry about competition to produce returns; and the poor are the beneficiaries of the vast federal borrowing that goes some way toward explaining why interest rates cannot climb, given that servicing the ever-rising federal debt would become almost unsustainable.
THE PRESIDENCY: An imperial presidency is not new. But rule by executive fiat that escapes audit from the media is. We live in an age when a president can arbitrarily nullify a law, like Obamacare’s employer mandate; ignore it, like the Defense of Marriage Act; or simply create it, as with partial blanket amnesties. Various wars — on coal, guns, non-union businesses, and political opponents — are waged by executive action. For now, the logic is that the president’s means are justified by the exalted ends that he professes. Obama has set the precedent of a president creating, ignoring, or defying laws as he sees fit to forward a progressive agenda.
SCANDAL: Bill Clinton gave us plenty of scandals; but, as in the case of the Nixon administration, the media galvanized public attention to the danger of a sometimes lawless administration. But whether it is the Benghazi deception, the IRS scandal, the NSA disclosures, the AP monitoring, or Fast and Furious, a new precedent has been established that the public is supposed to weigh two considerations in assessing scandal: the truth versus the damage that the truth can do to a progressive vision of a fairer America. So far the truth has lost.
POLITICS: In his political style, Obama seems to operate on the medieval concept of exemption. Through lofty spoken abstractions, he excuses low behavior. Praising “civility” allows you to call your opponents veritable terrorists; talk of unity means energizing supporters to get in their opponents’ face; advocacy of a campaign of principles reduces Romney to a veritable ogre. Plenty of presidents have proved vicious, but few so adepts in attributing their own base behavior to others. Damning fat cats and corporate-jet owners allows a president to hold serial $50,000-a-head fundraisers. Ridiculing Romney’s elevator seems to make vacationing in Aspen, Costa del Sol, Vail, and Martha’s Vineyard perfectly natural.
ENERGY: Before Obama, natural gas and nuclear power were seen as preferable alternatives to oil and coal. If new restrictions on reactors and a de facto end to the new federal leasing of land for oil and gas exploration are any indication, neither energy source is now acceptable. Had Obama opened up federal lands for fracking and horizontal drilling, built the Keystone Pipeline, and encouraged natural gas as a transportation tool, power bills would not have climbed and gasoline prices would not have doubled. The U.S. would have enjoyed an even brighter energy future than what private enterprise alone has provided.
OBAMA’S VIEW OF ENERGY: Whether we cite former energy secretary Steven Chu’s lunacy on the desirability of raising U.S. gasoline prices to European levels, or candidate Obama’s own promises to bankrupt coal companies — is elitist to the core. His signature energy achievement is to change the terms of the debate: The chief energy issues for the Obama administration are not national security, not energy independence, not greater competitiveness for American business, not savings for the American consumer, and not jobs. Instead, whether a fuel might heat the atmosphere seems the sole concern.
RACE: Had Condoleezza Rice or Colin Powell been elected president; race would have been incidental rather than essential to their governance. Nothing in Barack Obama’s past suggests that such a statement could ever have been true of his presidency.
From the beer summit to “punish our enemies” to the two occasions of pop editorializing about Trayvon Martin, and from Eric Holder’s “my people” to “nation of cowards,” the Obama administration has sought at opportune times to emphasize racial differences, mostly to secure the base for Obama’s own reelection and for midterm elections.
The result is that race relations have become more polarized than at any other time in the last 30 years. Under Obama’s leadership, celebrities, political analysts, and politicians traffic more in racial animus than at any other time in our recent history. Obama has had an uncanny ability to energize the Black Caucus to voice unusually inflammatory charges. How did it happen that suddenly Chris Rock and Jamie Foxx sound racially biased? When did the post-election commentary of pundits (e.g., “too old, too white, too male”) become so race-based?
FROM THE TRIVAL: — dropping his g’s and clumsily transforming his cadences — to the fundamental — weighing in on mediis rebus on pending court cases — the president’s goal has often been division, not unity. We have reached a surreal situation of reading daily accounts of black-on-white crime in the media, reported by politically correct journalists who dare not mention the perpetrator’s race, followed by enraged readers’ comments that are the most patently racist in modern memory.
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: Before Obama, the debate over illegal immigration was mostly an argument between two schools that transcended politics and ideology: literalists who believed the law had to be enforced to its full extent, postfacto as well as preventatively, and realists who agreed in theory but felt that many of the 11 million who resided illegally in the U.S. could be given a pathway to citizenship, so long as they have no criminal record, have avoided public assistance, and could claim long residence — contingent on closing the border,
Not now. Under Obama, illegal immigration has become a political if not a racially charged issue. Supporters of blanket amnesty saw an evolving demographic process of fundamentally transforming the electorate of the American Southwest, resonating with Obama’s own unfortunate lead, as in his advice to Latinos to “punish our enemies.” Perhaps this vision was best summarized by ACORN’s former CEO, Bertha Lewis. She recently urged African-Americans to support increased immigration on the following rationale: “We got some Latino cousins, we got some Asian cousins, we got some Native-American cousins, we got all kind of cousins. . .. Cousins need to get together, because if we’re going to be [part of the non-white] majority, it makes sense for black people in this country to get down with immigration reform. . .. Everyone, even all white folks in this country, acknowledge that in a minute, [the] United States of America will be a new majority, will be majority minority, a brand-new thing. . .. For the first time ever in history, African-Americans outvoted white Americans. Pooh. That’s the fear of the white man. That could change everything. That’s why [immigration] should matter to us.”
FOREIGN POLICY: What is the common theme to the euphemisms about terrorism and radical Islam, the failed reset with Russia, withdrawal from Iraq, confusion in Afghanistan, lead-from-behind in Libya, pink lines and pseudo– “game changers” in Syria, the faux deadlines with Iran, mesmerization with Turkey, peace feelers to Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela, as well as the rhetorical tropes found in the Cairo speech, the U.N. addresses, and the Al-Arabiya interview?
Just as, in Obama’s worldview, the 1 percent exercise undue influence in the United States, so too abroad America has exercised exceptional power and influence that either are not warranted by its traditions and history, or do not contribute to stability and social justice in the world at large. Fundamentally transforming the role of the U.S. means tilting toward countries that are suspicious of the Western tradition, and favoring groups and countries like Turkey, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Palestinians that have supposedly legitimate grievances against the United States. The goal? Probably, the transformation of the U.S. into something like the EU, whose democratic socialism is manifested abroad with soft-power lectures, and who's open borders are making the EU regret and reconsider that big mistake as witnessed by Britain’s departure from the EU, and the unspoken horrors brought on by the Syrian refugee crisis throughout the region!!
GUNS: There is no new restrictive legislation on firearms; and yet never has the ability to buy reasonably priced ammunition and firearms in quantity been more accessible and desired. In loudly threatening to enact more gun control after each publicized tragic shooting, the Obama administration has created a climate of fear, which has prompted hoarding, shortages, panic buying, and paranoia, which have accomplished what the federal government could not.
To what degree these changes will be reversed or institutionalized depends on the 2016 election. For now, Obama’s transformations are not to be found only in his legislative record, but far more in his use of the presidency to change the way we envision and talk about America.
HOW'S THAT FUNDAMENTAL TRANSFORMATION GOING? ~~Michael Barone
When Air Force One landed in China last week for the G-20 Summit, Chinese authorities didn't wheel out the usual staircase for the president to disembark. Instead he had to exit through an opening in the back of the enormous aircraft. It was, you might say, a pivot to Asia.
That wasn't the last insult Barack Obama absorbed in Hangzhou. The president of the Philippines, long considered a U.S. ally, called him a name family publication usually don't print. It's rare for an American president to be treated with such contempt. It's what happens when you draw red lines and do nothing when people step over them.
When Barack Obama promised to "fundamentally (transform) the United States of America," this is probably not what he had in mind. But like the much-talked-about pivot to Asia, his two most transformational policy initiatives, as identified by his foreign policy staffer Ben Rhodes -- Obamacare at home and the Iran nuclear deal abroad -- have had disappointing results.
Consider Obamacare. "Insurers are pulling out of the exchanges and premiums are rising," as Bloomberg's Megan McArdle writes. Fewer people are uninsured, but mostly because they're shoved into bare bones Medicaid-type plans, which some studies indicate don't improve health outcomes. We may be seeing death spirals, with higher premiums making healthy people drop coverage until only the very sick buy policies.
One reason for Obamacare's problems is that it was jammed through Congress in defiance of public opinion and contrary to legislative regular order. The public, speaking through the unlikely medium of the voters of Massachusetts, made clear their views when Scott Brown won a January 2010 special election after promising to cast a decisive vote against Obamacare.
That left Democrats with no ideal options. In December, the Senate, with Democrats' 60-vote supermajority, had passed a placeholder measure with plenty of wrinkles to be ironed out. With the 60th vote gone, their options were to jam that bill through a reluctant House or to drop back and negotiate with Republicans on a more limited alternative.
Politicians have to act without the luxury of knowing the future. Barack Obama, at the urging of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, decided to push ahead, in the hopes that after the bill was passed and (as Pelosi said) people learned what was in it, it would be popular. Don't people always want more free stuff?
Not necessarily, it turns out. Obamacare has been tested in hundreds of polls since it became law in March 2010. In just about every one, pluralities and usually majorities have expressed negative feelings about the law. That helped Republicans win majorities in the House in 2010, 2012 and 2014, majorities unwilling to change the law in ways Democrats would like.
Obama's gamble that the law would work as he hoped and promised has failed to date. Health insurance markets and health care delivery have been transformed, but not fundamentally and not sustainably. Mark him incomplete, at best.
Incomplete is also the best mark conceivable for Obama's other attempt at fundamental transformation, the Iran nuclear deal. It's part of his basic approach of spurning traditional allies and courting traditional enemies.
Sometimes this works: Friends stay friendly; enemies change course. But Iran's mullah regime has certainly not done so to date. In lengthy negotiations it extracted concession after concession Obama and John Kerry said they'd never make. They even got secret approval of transfers --in cash -- of at least $400 million and apparently $1.3 billion more.
It's plain, however, that Iran's extremists have not given up on their goal of obtaining nuclear weapons, deliverable to Israel, India, Europe and maybe beyond. The best the deal's defenders can say is that it delays the process.
The Iran deal lacked and lacks majority support from the public and in Congress. To prevent a congressional veto, Obama Democrats pushed through an unusual procedure, which reversed the constitutional requirement of two-thirds Senate approval for treaties. Now it just needed one-third.
But all signs are that Iran remains an obdurate enemy, supporting terrorists and spreading its influence in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and the Gulf. America's traditional friends in the region are looking for other sources of support.
That seems the case in Asia as well. The Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, intended to bolster America's regional lead role, now looks dead, as both major-party presidential nominees oppose it. Which leaves Obama, who never pressed the deal hard with his own party, scampering out of the back of his plane. Some fundamental transformation.
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