Thursday, May 21, 2009

Karl Rove On Dr. Jekyll & President Hyde


The pronouncements of Candidate Obama are glaringly inconsistent with the actions of President Obama. Karl Rove opines on that today, noting that the inconsistency is prevelant in both the sphere of national security and domestic policy - with the former being welcome, the latter being unwelcome, and the sum of the whole telling us some troubling things about President Obama.

Karl Rove begins his article noting with approval that, in contravention to all of his heated and moralizing rhetoric excoriating President Bush over the War on Terror during the campaign, President Obama has essentially adopted the Bush blueprint for the war on terror wholesale. I covered this in detail in a post below, "Candidate Obama versus President Obama in the War on Terror." As Rove notes:

These reversals are both praiseworthy and evidence that, when it comes to national security, being briefed on terror threats as president is a lot different than placating MoveOn.org and Code Pink activists as a candidate. The realities of governing trump the realities of campaigning.

Rove then moves onto the realm of domestic policy:


. . . We are also seeing Mr. Obama reverse himself on the domestic front, but this time in a manner that will do more harm than good.

Mr. Obama campaigned on "responsible fiscal policies," arguing in a speech on the Senate floor in 2006 that the "rising debt is a hidden domestic enemy." In his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, he pledged to "go through the federal budget line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work." Even now, he says he'll "cut the deficit . . . by half by the end of his first term in office" and is "rooting out waste and abuse" in the budget.

However, Mr. Obama's fiscally conservative words are betrayed by his liberal actions. He offers an orgy of spending and a bacchanal of debt. His budget plans a 25% increase in the federal government's share of the GDP, a doubling of the national debt in five years, and a near tripling of it in 10 years.

On health care, Mr. Obama's election ads decried "government-run health care" as "extreme," saying it would lead to "higher costs." Now he is promoting a plan that would result in a de facto government-run health-care system. Even the Washington Post questions it, saying, "It is difficult to imagine . . . benefits from a government-run system."

Making adjustments in office is one thing. Constantly governing in direct opposition to what you said as a candidate is something else. Mr. Obama's flip-flops on national security have been wise; on the domestic front, they have been harmful.

In both cases, though, we have learned something about Mr. Obama. What animated him during the campaign is what historian Forrest McDonald once called "the projection of appealing images." All politicians want to project an appealing image. What Mr. McDonald warned against is focusing on this so much that an appealing image "becomes a self-sustaining end unto itself." Such an approach can work in a campaign, as Mr. Obama discovered. But it can also complicate life once elected, as he is finding out.

Mr. Obama's appealing campaign images turned out to have been fleeting. He ran hard to the left on national security to win the nomination, only to discover the campaign commitments he made were shallow and at odds with America's security interests.

Mr. Obama ran hard to the center on economic issues to win the general election. He has since discovered his campaign commitments were obstacles to ramming through the most ideologically liberal economic agenda since the Great Society.

Mr. Obama either had very little grasp of what governing would involve or, if he did, he used words meant to mislead the public. Neither option is particularly encouraging. America now has a president quite different from the person who advertised himself for the job last year. Over time, those things can catch up to a politician.

Read the enitre article. Perhaps if MSM had actually vetted this deeply disingenuous man, American's may have had sufficient knowledge to make an educated decision for whom pull the lever last November. Instead, many American's pulled the lever for an image that has turned out to be far more shadow than substance. And if the polls are correct, it would seem that many are finding this reality ever more troubling. Caveat Emptor indeed.









3 comments:

suek said...

In one sense, I'm not so concerned about Obama. I suspect that he'll be a one term president, assuming that the Birth Certificate issue doesn't ever come to fruition. I _do_ have fun imagining the results of an honest investigation of his "natural born" status, and his being found not to be so...however....

What really troubles me is that imo, he was very clear about his goals for the presidency, and those goals were socialistic. Clearly. And yet, the majority of Americans voted for him. Skin color was a factor - no denying that. Take away the color factor...would he still have been elected? are the majority of American people _really_ in favor of Socialism?

That really troubles me. Capitalism made this country great. No, not everybody gets rich, but for the most part, even the poor in the US are better off than the middle class in many parts of the world.

Those links I provided (on the http://wolfhowling.blogspot.com/2009/05/molding-young-minds.html )post make it abundantly clear that the intent is to destroy the US in order to establish world communism. They have been unbelievably successful.

With those intentions, and the intentions of the Muslim Brotherhood, people need to wake up and realize that we are at war. Maybe not a shooting war, but war nevertheless. And it looks to me like we're losing.

PS. Is there any mechanism by which links can be made "live" when posted?

MathewK said...

It's the same out here GW, our PM also campaigned as a conservative and won, and now he's revealed himself to be just another socialist gasbag with no clue apart from stealing from those who have and giving it to those who don't.

"Perhaps if MSM had actually vetted this deeply disingenuous man, American's may have had sufficient knowledge to make an educated decision for whom pull the lever last November."

Same here, they may have been on the side of the nation some time ago, but not any more.

suek said...

The problem is that the MSM is part of the conspiracy. They have already been corrupted. No chance that they'll vet anything. He's the "chosen" one.

So >>Same here, they may have been on the side of the nation some time ago, but not any more.>> is absolutely correct. They have joined the enemy. They _are_ the enemy.