POOR President Obama. Everybody is picking on him. Some people don’t understand how hard his job is. Others are just mean and selfish.
That’s the latest White House whine, as though the most powerful man in the world is a victim of sinister domestic forces beyond his reach.
The woe-is-me complaints suggest the occupant of the Oval Office, Nobel Prize and all, is feeling weak and small.
Yikes. No wonder the world is ganging up on us.
The point was driven home yesterday when Russia’s foreign minister told Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that Russia was not ready to impose tougher sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program. Shockingly, Clinton reportedly agreed new sanctions were premature.
Premature? Iran has been violating UN resolutions for years and is planning to get nukes and promises to use them.
What would be the right time to get tougher — when we see a mushroom cloud?
And sanctions, remember, are the “soft power” the administration prefers, instead of military action, which is so George W. Bush. But suddenly faced with resistance, Washington now finds even sanctions too rough.
Another report says Palestinians are losing faith in Obama. If true, they join Israelis, meaning Obama has achieved his first Mideast agreement, though not the one he promised.
Alas, the evidence is clear–doubts about Obama’s backbone are spreading. The Financial Times says the view that he talks a good game but doesn’t get anything done is no longer confined to conservatives.
“The danger for Mr. Obama is that you are beginning to hear echoes of these charges from people who should be the president’s natural supporters,” columnist Gideon Rachman writes. He cites a European politician — part of a key Obama base — who says the president often goes wobbly when challenged.
Examples are abundant, from succeeding in Afghanistan to reducing the deficit, but there is no sign the White House gets it. Instead, the president’s team is in full attack mode against an enemies list of dissenters and critics.
The targets, from the Fox News Channel to the insurance industry to gay-rights bloggers, stand accused of being unfair, self-serving or unrealistic.
Each attack contained a whiff of self-pity, revealing just how difficult Obama is finding the transition from candidate to superpower president.
The attacks on Fox, where I am a contributor, are a fresh assault on an old target. While it is true that hosts on some popular programs openly oppose Obama policies, the White House has no problems with two other cable networks, CNN and MSNBC, that tilt in his favor.
So it’s not opinion journalism that bothers the White House, only critical opinion.
Ditto for its approach when insurers released a report faulting the health-care push. The finding that costs would go up for middle-income families by as much as $4,000 a year was met with accusations the industry had “misled” and “sabotaged” the White House.
Of course, the president, who still prevailed in a Senate vote, was happy to deal with insurers and their lobbyists as long as they supported him. But when they switched sides, after what the industry said were changes in the plan that hurt their businesses, the White House saw only dirty pool.
The attack on gay-rights bloggers was especially revealing of the White House bunker mood. CNBC reported that an Obama aide said that liberals who believe he is moving too slowly on campaign promises “need to take off the pajamas, get dressed and realize that governing a closely divided country is complicated and difficult.” Say what? Being president is tougher than campaigning?
Now they tell us.
Ed. Dept. memo: Read it and weep
PLAIN English is the law, but nobody bothered to inform the city’s Department of Education. Here are key points in one of its lengthy missives, written in a style that only educrats could love and understand:
“This regulation supersedes A-812 dated February 10, 2004. This regulation has been updated and revised substantially to conform to the Department of Education’s Wellness Policy and initiatives to improve the quality and nutritional value of foods and beverages that are available for children.
“New Provisions:
*Parallels the DOE’s Wellness Policy with respect to the sale of beverages and snacks to students.
*Limits the sale of approved snack items during the school day and, with only one exception related to PA/PTA fund-raising, prohibits the sale of non-approved items at any time between the time school begins and 6:00 p.m.
*Establishes a centralized procedure for schools to purchase foods and beverages for sale in school stores and school-based vending machines.
*Prohibits principals from allowing non-contractor third parties onto school premises, including schoolyards, to sell food and/or beverages to students and staff.”
Translation: No more bake sales in schools, no more sugary drinks or snacks in vending machines.
You wouldn’t know that from reading the four-page memo, or by following online links to other headquarters’ memos. They’re stuffed with bureaucratic gibberish.
The plain English comes only from news reports and from clear-thinking administrators, like one at the Bronx HS of Science who made the meaning clear to parents.
No wonder Johnny can’t read. His teachers can’t write.
TAX TROUGH RUNS LOW AS LAWMAKERS PIG OUT
THE news from Albany is so predictable, it almost doesn’t qualify as news. State tax collections continued to slide in September, with revenues down $516 million, or 7.7 percent lower than in September 2008.
Income-tax revenues fell by a whopping 10.7 percent. Revenues from sales and business taxes also declined.
No surprise. Having raised taxes and fees by $8 billion, including slapping a 31 percent hike on the rich, Gov. Paterson and the Legislature did the worst possible thing in a recession.
They took too much money from people’s pockets, and now taxpayers are tapped out, thus proving a point attributed to Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that eventually, you run out of other people’s money.”
Thank God
The headline sent my heart racing. I scanned the article under “Pope Canonizes Five New Saints,” doing a quick search of the five holies. Relief. None was named Obama.