Hours after President Obama stumbled through his retreat on ObamaCare last week, a liberal friend was telling me how disappointed she is in him. The insurance debacle, she said with resignation, was the final straw and led her to conclude he lacks the right stuff to be a good president.
“It’s so discouraging,” she sighed. “I give up.”
She’s not alone. Poll after poll shows that millions of former Obama-bots now concede he is not worthy of their trust and are stampeding off the bus. The magic ride is over and they just want to go home and sleep it off.
Even The New York Times editorial page stirred. The big cheese of the Obama Protection Racket assailed his administration’s “incompetence.” Stop the presses!
Finally, a great awakening is taking place. Slowly but clearly, America is moving away from a national nightmare, when nonbelievers in the Church of Dear Leader were labeled racists and fascists. The freedom to disagree is coming back.
But hold the champagne — we already face a long hangover. America is stuck with a weakened, discredited president for three more years. The messes he created won’t be easy to clean up while he’s in the White House.
The rot from his reign of error runs deep and Politico magazine is fleshing out details of two disturbing patterns. It says Obama rarely meets with his cabinet secretaries and is deeply estranged from top military leaders.
That’s in addition to the health- care world he turned upside down and now inside out. His quick fix to make good on his three-year lie that “you can keep your plan if you like it” settles nothing and serves only as the opening bid in a heated high-stakes battle.
Despite his desperate bid to keep his party in line, public fury broke the dam among Democrats, and 39 in the House joined Republicans to pass a bill allowing canceled plans to be offered to all consumers. Obama is so politically toxic that the ranks of party rebels are likely to grow as we get closer to next year’s elections.
As for the millions of people who already lost their health plans because of ObamaCare, their fate is blowing in the wind. Insurance companies are furious at his sudden switcheroo and are not sure if it’s legal, and state commissioners must decide which plans to approve before any can be sold.
If that were all, it would be trouble enough. But the talks with Iran over its nuclear program could come to a head this week, and Obama’s weakness at home will make him more desperate for a deal, even a bad one.
He already was prepared to lift some sanctions for mere promises, and a frantic John Kerry was trying to stop Israeli complaints about the talks. In fact, the secretary of state told congressional skeptics that they should “stop listening to Israel,” according to participants, but refused to reveal the details of a deal he demanded they support.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has given up on Obama and is talking to Pakistan about buying nuclear weapons. And Egypt’s generals are moving closer to Russia, a result of Obama’s preference for the Muslim Brotherhood.
The stubborn backdrop to these problems is the economy that won’t grow. Four and one-half years after the recession ended, jobs and incomes inch up too slowly, and there is wide belief that record stock-market highs reflect a cheap money bubble.
History teaches that a weak president can be more dangerous than a strong one. The grabbing at straws and phantom progress to conceal a lack of real leadership provokes distrust among honest citizens and gives dishonest ones a license to steal. Something similar is happening on the foreign stage as our friends lose heart and our adversaries gain courage.
With trouble growing everywhere, we should give the devil his due. Obama promised to transform America and, unfortunately, that’s a promise he’s keeping.
Bam’s web of lie$
What a bargain.
White House techies admitted to Congress that the ObamaCare Web site cost more than $600 million through September.
The tab doesn’t include the last six weeks, when armies of contractors worked around the clock to fix the bugs.
Taxpayers got ripped off and saw fresh proof of one of the three great lies: Government is here to help.
Sharpton won biggest city haul
Mayor Al Sharpton said yesterday he won’t rest and will keep the pressure on “all of them.”
What, you didn’t know Sharpton controls City Hall? Then you weren’t paying attention.
To watch incoming Mayor Bill de Blasio, Public Advocate Tish James, Comptroller Scott Stringer and Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson smother him with praise and gratitude was to realize Sharpton’s power.
The leaders of the incoming government didn’t go to his Harlem headquarters just to kiss his ring. They went to kiss his ring on bended knee.
De Blasio is extra grateful because Sharpton didn’t endorse Bill Thompson, the only black candidate in the race. Thompson counted on the black vote but ended up splitting it with de Blasio after Sharpton said he couldn’t decide between them.
The result of de Blasio’s debt is that the “tale of two cities” he bemoans will endure.
When it comes to polarizing people, Sharpton is the undisputed king.
Kelly’s pander candor
Ray Kelly’s charge that the top Democratic mayoral candidates betrayed him to pander for votes is certainly true, but that’s only part of their shameful conduct. They also betrayed the men and women of the NYPD, the citizens of New York and their own principles. Or the principles they used to have.
Bill de Blasio won the primary by pushing an anti-cop agenda and other radical ideas that contradicted much of his conventionally liberal, 12-year government career. Two other Dems, Council Speaker Christine Quinn and former Comptroller Bill Thompson, started the race as relative moderates and ended by following de Blasio over the cliff. As he pulled away, they panicked and aped his smears on Kelly.
“They’ll say or do anything to get elected,” the top cop told Playboy magazine. “They all claimed to be friends of mine until their mayoral campaigns.”
Count candor as another point in Kelly’s favor. He will leave his post with dignity and a record unmatched in fighting crime and saving lives. New Yorkers, even those who betrayed him, are forever in his debt.
Godspeed, commissioner.
App-solutely ridiculous
In a story on Internet start-up Snapchat, whose owners rejected a $3 billion buyout from Facebook because they want more money, The Wall Street Journal described the company this way: It “has no sales and no business model — but it does have a smartphone app that delivers hundreds of millions of messages, mostly from teenagers and young adults, that disappear in 10 seconds or less.”
In other words, it’s a metaphor for a world gone nuts.