With domestic and world affairs in shambles, it is high time for President Obama to do the wave, get on the helicopter and leave the White House for good. In areas as diverse as foreign policy, national security, our economy, the trustworthiness of our federal agencies, so-called “women’s issues,” executive power and religious liberty, the president and his hapless minions have taken us to a new low.
Mr. Obama set the course for his Middle East policy in his Cairo speech of June 2009. He promised to withdraw all US troops by August 2010 and to “leave Iraq to the Iraqis” and would later compare the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to a “JV team.” But, as a result of his withdrawal of our troops in 2011, we have instead left Iraq to ISIS, a group whose brutality now makes Afghanistan’s Taliban and 9/11’s Al Qaeda themselves look like JV teams.
ISIS routinely beheads children, throws gay men off tall buildings, sells women into sexual slavery, and destroys priceless global cultural heritage like ancient Palmyra. Reflecting on U.S. power, Mr. Obama once quoted Thomas Jefferson’s hope “that our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be.” Mr. Obama could not use less power abroad if he tried. Is American power greater as a result?
Take a short tour around the rest of the region: Libya, Yemen, Syria, Nigeria, and Tunisia have seen the collapse of governments, devastating civil wars and horrific terrorist attacks on innocent civilians.
“To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history,” Obama pointedly said upon taking office, “but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.” Every day since, the corrupt, deceitful and intolerant regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran has continued to raise its tightly clenched fist and shout “Death to America!”
The Iranian regime has benefitted from Mr. Obama’s insistence on ramming through Congress his dangerous nuclear deal. After repeating for 24 months the mantra, “No deal is better than a bad deal,” the administration has abruptly switched to “No deal equals war.”
The capitulation gives Iran carte blanche toward its nuclear ambitions and guarantees an economic windfall of $150 billion for the same Iranian regime that violently suppressed political dissent during the Green Revolution of 2009 and unabashedly holds four Americans in its deplorable prisons.
The administration’s foreign policy has produced failure at every turn. A promised reset of relations with Russia resulted only in the Russian takeover of Crimea and ongoing fighting in Ukraine. Listless relations with China have stoked Chinese aggression in the Southeast Asian region, worrying our allies and emboldening our enemies.
At home, Mr. Obama took office promising to improve our economy by increasing taxes, creating more central-planning government mandates from Washington apparatchiks, enlarging government aid and creating “shovel-ready jobs.”
Americans receiving food stamps now number 45 million, of which 13.2 million are new food stamp recipients, and the poverty rate has only increased. Not since 1977 has our labor participation rate been so low.
Median income has declined and family health care premiums have increased by $4,154 per year, despite the president’s promises of lower costs. New regulations since Obama took office handcuff our economy and cost an estimated $95 billion per year, despite the president’s promises to reduce bureaucratic red tape.
No sober-minded observer believed the soaring rhetoric at the time. For those who did, the current reality has awakened them.
You might think that with the increase in federal government handouts, the popular perception of government would improve. Yet, when the IRS became weaponized against conservative groups, the danger of centralized power again became too obvious to ignore.
Women in particular have fared poorly in the Obama years, continuing to lose ground in his economy as negative or slow job growth has had a disparate impact on women. Food stamp recipients outnumber the women who work full-time.
Despite the administration’s wage-gap rhetoric, women in Obama’s White House earn only 88 cents for each dollar paid to men. Last year, only 30 percent of female employees in the administration made the top salary of $172,000. Women are paid at the lower end of the pay scale across all parts of the same federal government that would seek to regulate private-sector wages.
Our healthcare system has become less affordable without any increase in quality of care. Families have lost their preferred plans despite the president’s countless promises that “if you like your plan you can keep it.”
The same president who infamously insisted “I am not a dictator” has issued dozens of executive orders codifying lawless fiats that overreach into wide-ranging areas of federal law from immigration to religious liberty.
Toward the end of the Bush presidency, an inside-the-Beltway bumper sticker declared, “1.20.09: The End of an Error.” Now, in the twilight of the Obama presidency, we see clearly that Inauguration Day 2017 will mark the end of errors too numerous to count.
First published in The Daily Caller in September 2015
