President Pass-the-Buck

Ed Morrisey observes a tendency of our missing in action President:

“The modern American standard for political leadership was set by Harry Truman, who put a sign on his Oval Office desk that read, “The buck stops here.”  After almost a full year in office, Obama and his administration haven’t figured out that Americans expect that attitude from every President, and not a series of blamehifts to one’s predecessor, regardless of how unpopular he happened to be.  They expect not just leadership from a President, but visible leadership, a muscular sort of public presence that shows tough decision-making and command of the facts and concepts involved in the decisions.

Of course, many of us warned of this problem when the Democrats nominated a man who had never held executive office at any level for the toughest executive position in the world.  Obama has demonstrated all of the leadership one would expect from a legislative back-bencher, a man who passed the buck a lot more often than he held it at both the state and federal levels prior to winning the election last November.  He has passed the buck repeatedly this year, on Porkulus, ObamaCare, cap-and-trade, and would have done so on Afghanistan had there been anyone who could have handled it.  The Obama Way is the anti-Truman, and his falling approval rating reflects the fact that Americans have begun to discover that.”

Passing the buck is apparently tiring as Michelle Malkin observes in Poor Obama being President is Exhausting,

“Jetting off for Broadway dates, undeserved Peace Prizes, botched Crony-lympics bids, and world apology tours is hard work, don’t you know?”

“But what else did you expect from a man who has been phoning it in from the beginning of his brief political career as the Illinois state senator who voted “present” nearly 130 times?

Americans can help alleviate the exhausted commander-in-chief’s discomfort by ensuring his retirement in 2012.”

Soaring But Empty Words Mark Obama Presidency

Charles Krauthammer hits home on Obama’s misses:

“We lost a year. But it was not just any year. It was a year of spectacularly squandered opportunity. In Iran, it was a year of revolution, beginning with a contested election and culminating this week in huge demonstrations mourning the death of the dissident Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri — and demanding no longer a recount of the stolen election but the overthrow of the clerical dictatorship.”

“Why is this so important? Because revolutions succeed at that singular moment, that imperceptible historical inflection, when the people, and particularly those in power, realize that the regime has lost the mandate of heaven. With this weakening dictatorship desperate for affirmation, why is the U.S. repeatedly offering just such affirmation?

Apart from ostracizing and delegitimizing these gangsters, we should be encouraging and reinforcing the demonstrators. This is no trivial matter. When pursued, beaten, arrested and imprisoned, dissidents can easily succumb to feelings of despair and isolation. Natan Sharansky testifies to the electric effect Ronald Reagan’s Evil Empire speech had on lifting spirits in the Gulag. The news was spread cell to cell in code tapped on the walls. They knew they weren’t alone, that America was committed to their cause.

Yet so aloof has Obama been that on Hate America Day (Nov. 4, the anniversary of the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran), pro-American counter-demonstrators chanted “Obama, Obama, you are either with us or with them,” i.e., their oppressors.” Read More

Elizabethan Totalitarianism/Barbarism

In Fr.Robert Barron’s “A Tale of Two Skulls” history comes alive and speaks to the accepted barbarism of an age that lost its way, much as our own has.  Today we can terminate a pregnancy and label the dismembered embro as “products of conception.”

Pearl Harbor Remembered

Pearl Harbor Attacked!

Pearl Harbor Survivors Association here.

Lessons from history are the most potent.  Forgetting our history and the historical fact of our relationships with other nations and their history, will make us victims of our own stupidity.  As threatening to our future and freedom as that is, the mangling of history, the distorting history and the making of history to be “politically correct” and palatable to all, endangers this and future generations who need truth not fiction and propaganda to survive.

Michelle Malkin on “never forget”: Pearl Harbor 68 years.

Our Santa Claus Government

Where are we headed America?

Here are some Santa Claus moments:

On October 7th of this year in Detroit’s downtown, a mob scene of thousands for what was believed to be “free money”, “Obama Money.” Actually it was just free applications for free money.

Here’s the exchange of one hopeful citizen and reporter Ken Rogulski of WJR News:

ROGULSKI:Why are you here ?

Woman: To get some money

ROGULSKI: What kind of Money ?

Woman: Obama money

ROGULSKI: Where’s it comin; from ?

Woman: Obama

ROGULSKI: And where did Obama get it from ?

WOMAN: I don’t know, his stash. I don’t know. I don’t know where he got it from, but he’s givin’ it to us. And we love him. That’s why we voted for him. O-ba-ma. O-ba-ma.

(…)

ROGULSKI: Did you get an application to fill out yet?

WOMAN: I sure did. And I filled it out, and I am waiting to see what the results are going to be.

ROGULSKI: Will you know today how much money you’re getting?

WOMAN: No, I won’t, but I’m waiting for a phone call.

ROGULSKI: Where’s the money coming from?

WOMAN: I believe it’s coming from the City of Detroit or the state.

ROGULSKI: Where did they get it from?

WOMAN: Some funds that was forgiven (sic) by Obama.

ROGULSKI: And where did Obama get the funds?

WOMAN: Obama getting the funds from… Ummm, I have no idea, to tell you the truth. He’s the president.

More here.

President Wishy-Washy

Charles Krauthammer  doesn’t pull his punches in Uncertain Trumpet and Obama has no punch:

We shall fight in the air, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields, we shall fight in the hills — for 18 months. Then we start packing for home. We shall never surrender — unless the war gets too expensive, in which case, we shall quote Eisenhower on “the need to maintain balance in and among national programs” and then insist that “we can’t simply afford to ignore the price of these wars.”

The quotes are from President Obama’s West Point speech announcing the Afghanistan troop surge. What a strange speech it was — a call to arms so ambivalent, so tentative, so defensive.

Which made his last-minute assertion of “resolve unwavering” so hollow. It was meant to be stirring. It fell flat. In August, he called Afghanistan “a war of necessity.” On Tuesday night, he defined “what’s at stake” as “the common security of the world.” The world, no less. Yet, we begin leaving in July 2011?