An Important Address

Last night's prime time address by President Obama was a painfully difficult thing to watch or listen to. It was at times condescending and spiteful, uninspired and uninspiring, full of child like attacks at his opponents, highlighted by a race baiting attack on a Cambridge police officer. All of this from the man who was "post-partisan".

However, The address may be the most important one Barak Obama ever gives us. All during the campaign, he was an enigma. Was he the charismatic leader who inspired a generation of new activists or was he the horribly over matched, easily confused, rambling lightweight that appeared sometimes during unscripted moments? Now we know. As all hard times do, this health care debate has laid bare for all to see the real qualities of our 44th President.

And after examination, the only conclusion to draw is that he isn't much of anything at all.

He isn't a charismatic, political survivalist like Bill Clinton; he doesn't have the steely resolve of George W. Bush; he doesn't have a great political mind like Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon, he's not an expert in any one area like Herbert Hoover, he isn't capable of defining an era or movement like FDR or Harry Truman and he doesn't inspire the masses like Kennedy or Reagan.

No, he isn't any of those things or much else. The health care debate was entirely defined and timed by Obama. He could've taken up this task whenever he wanted; taken all the time he needed to plan and execute it properly. His Presidential measuring sticks all had history foisted upon them and rose to the challenge. Even Bill Clinton faced an impeachment, Somalia and Monica and came out a hero to many. Obama had the opportunity to dictate history and came up horribly small. When faced with opposition he became a feckless liar. Despite having an iron grip on all of government, he reacts like a petulant child when faced with mild Republican opposition. With two of the weakest, intellectually deficient leaders in the House and Senate, he can't control his party. Worst of all, he falls back into the politics of victims and victimizers, oppressed and oppressors when unable to cope with the issue at hand.

Why should we expect any different? Obama has always been a committed Stateist, student of Alinsky, serving out Marxist populism and Black Liberation ideology to a niche voting block in Chicago. The community agitator has reemerged. Barak Obama is the perfect representation of Chicago politics in that he is simply a machine. He has his playbook and he executes it without passion or patience. He is what he has always been, a shell filled with the ideas of other, more respected minds.

The real tragedy doesn't reside in his destined to fail policies or the damage his identity politics will do to the nation. No the real victims are the new faces brought into politics by the Obama revolution. The youth, minorities and the disillusioned all became involved during the 2008 election. When these people begin to realize what little they invested themselves in, will they become more active, looking for the real McCoy or will they again retreat into political oblivion, bitten one too many times by hope not fulfilled? This would truly be a tragedy for all involved, even conservatives who are now engaged in a way not seen since Reagan, due to Obama's radical leftist agenda.

Who knows, maybe Obama will develop into something tangible. History does have a way with presenting Presidents with opportunities to transform from the mediocre to the memorable. Some grasp the opportunity, like Truman, some don't, like Carter. He might want to get started though, the clock is ticking toward 2010 and if Obama and his party don't get something going, they will find themselves where Clinton found himself in 1994, a leftist President watching history being made by a conservative revolution that he was instrumental in starting.