Obama: Governing By Slogan

By Gary Starr for The Neville Awards

November 6, 2011

It started out with 'Hope and Change' and 'Yes we can.' Add a dollop of 'We are the ones we've been waiting for' and you had the recipe to cloud the judgment of normally seasoned and cynical liberal reporters, and even some conservative ones too.

After the disastrous 2008 election the slogans and catchphrases kept coming. Unemployment continued to increase, despite $800 billion in stimulus and Obamacare. To hide continued job losses Team Obama invented the phrase 'Jobs Saved or Created'. They don't use that one anymore, so universally reviled and ridiculed as it has now become.

There were also non-existent "shovel-ready" jobs just waiting to be filled. There were thousands of roads, bridges and schools (all union jobs, of course) that needed fixing or building. Eventually Obama and his minions had to admit that shovel-ready "wasn't as shovel-ready as we had hoped." So where did the money go? It still went to the unions, just not to union jobs.

As the recession increased its grip on the United States, our Fraudinator-in-Chief took to assigning blame.

The phrases "the economy my administration inherited," "ethics of greed," "reckless fat-cat bankers," and "selfish millionaires and billionaires", began to make it into the dialogue.

When that didn't magically stimulate anything Obama looked outwardly for something to fix blame on. He found it in the Japanese earthquake/tsunami and the economic turmoil in Europe. Our economy was beset with "headwinds" and "bumps in the road."

With no one left to blame but himself, Obama blamed the American people.

In October, Obama complained that "we used to have the best stuff. Think about it: The world used to say 'Let's travel to America. Let's see the Golden Gate Bridge. Let's see the Hoover Dam. Let's see the amazing things that America built.'"

And in September, he said the country "had gotten a little soft and, you know, we didn't have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades. We need to get back on track."

This predictably echoes Jimmy Carter in his infamous "malaise" speech: "the erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and political fabric of America."

Obama assigning blame to everyone but himself recalls the Soviet propaganda of avoiding blame for all of the failed 5-year plans. Worse than that it recalls Hitler in the last days of the Third Reich, blaming the defeat of Germany on the Germans:

On March 19, 1945 Hitler told his Minister of Armaments, Albert Speer, "If the war is lost the nation will also perish. This fate is inevitable. There is no necessity to take into consideration the basis which the people will need to continue even a most primitive existence. On the contrary, it will be better to destroy these things ourselves, because this nation will have proved to be the weaker one and the future will belong solely to the stronger eastern nation. Besides, those who will remain after the battle are only the inferior ones, for the good ones have all been killed."

This is what comes of self-appointed demi-gods and narcissists.

Most recently we have been witness to Obama's latest faux-stimulus plan, his non-existent jobs bill. With great fanfare he called a joint session of Congress to announce the bill with repeated exhortations of "Pass this bill NOW!!" It did not have the desired effect.

That was followed by the "We can't wait" campaign that had Obama running around the country implying he was going to go around Congress to get a jobs bill. Isn't he doing that already on just about everything else?

The halcyon days of cramming bills through a one-party Congress are over. Even the Democrats in the Senate are voting against stripped down versions of the Obama jobs package.

Maybe the slogan du jour should be "Resign Now!"
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