Not A Good Week For Obama

It’s been a bad week for Obama. It started out bad with the President saying sweet nothings into the Russian President’s ear, all while a microphone picked up the entire conversation. Apparently the President is urging the Russians to wait until after the election wherein Obama will have the flexibility to disarm the nation as a lame duck President. Then he waded into the Trayvon Martin controversy and bizarrely personalized the story, which only escalated matters. Then Obamacare was ripped to shreds in the Supreme Court, making Obama look like he doesn’t understand the Constitution.

Peggy Noonan has a piece out this week wherein she details some of the problems with Obama. Her issue isn’t that Obama is a liberal, her issue is that he appears devious and underhanded. Take the Russian flap this week, the President looks devious in this situation. He tells the Russians to wait until after the election when he’ll have more flexibility. In short he’s telling the Russians that he isn’t going to talk about what he’s going to do with the American people, so just wait until I’m re-elected and can do it without consulting them. He was devious in his handling of the contraception issue he created a couple months ago. His compromise was devious, it still required churches to pay for that which they find evil only in a round about way. People recognize this sort of thing.

The President apparently thinks the Republicans are descending into “madness.” What kind of President talks about his political opposition in this manner? I guess the same kind who while campaigning tells a group of latino voters to “defeat your enemies.” The enemies very clearly being the Republicans. Obama was supposed to be a post-partisan, post-racial President. He’s been nothing of the sort. He’s the most bitterly partisan President the nation has ever had. He passed Obamacare and the Stimulus in a partisan manner, he has refused to work with the GOP House on any number of issues. The House has passed numerous budgets which the President won’t push the Senate to vote on. Obama’s budget was defeated 417-0 in the House and 97-0 in the Senate. But the President will not sign on to anything associated with the GOP.

Why would he sign on to anything the GOP supports? We’re the “enemy” after all and we’re descending into “madness.” It’s one thing to think that of your political opposition, it’s another thing to say it in public when you’re the President. Especially when you actually have to deal with that political opposition. Obama cannot bypass Congress, no matter how much he would like to. If he’s re-elected it will only get worse for him as the Senate is almost certain to be won by the Republicans.

Obama is likely to win re-election only because the GOP has picked the worst possible candidate to oppose him. Otherwise, this President would lose decisively. Especially after a bad week like this where everything that has gone wrong has exposed a fundamental flaw. The economy is still a mess, the President has no major accomplishments which have been successful (the Stimulus is universally panned and Obamacare looks like it’s going down) and internationally the world hates us now more under Obama than they did under Bush. In short the man doesn’t deserve to be re-elected. Sadly the GOP has been snookered into voting for the man least likely to beat Obama by convincing themselves he’s the only one who can.