President Obama

President #44 is on his way out – and will be on January 20, 2017.   As it is, the most likely replacement will be either Hillary Clinton – who millions hate – or Donald Trump – who millions hate – and not Gary Johnson, whose libertarian supporters are split between “going to vote for him” (me), going to write in Austin Peterson, or going to write in Rand Paul…or maybe someone random for all I know.  I’d like to believe that for every so-called Libertarian who votes for Peterson or write-in – effectively wasting his/her vote far more than voting for Johnson himself would be – there’s a disgruntled Sanders, Republican or Democratic voter who knows that Johnson is much better than Hillary or Trump, and will vote for Gary Johnson.  We’ll see.   

I did NOT vote for Obama in 2008 (I voted Libertarian) or 2012 (I voted for Romney at my mom’s request).  But his Presidency has really brought out the crazy in America.   As idiocy offends and annoys me, here are a few items I’d like to address.  The majority of this will be de facto defense of him, though I’m by no means his biggest fan.

US Citizen.  He was born in Hawaii in 1961.   Since Hawaii became a state in 1959, that means he was born in the US.  His mother was a US citizen at the time of his birth.  The silly thing is, even if he was born in Kenya – which he wasn’t – he would STILL be a US citizen and eligible to be President.   Same deal with Ted Cruz, born in Canada to US citizen parents.  These are non-starter issues that only clueless people dwell upon.   By contrast, Arnold Schwarzenegger was born in Austria to Austrian parents and became a naturalized US citizen by living here.  Notice how no one, including Arnold himself, ever talks about him running for President.  No one would have given Ted Cruz OR Barack Obama a dime had either been ineligible to be President.

He's Black!  Actually, half-black.  His mother was white, his father was black.  Despite this, no one calls him our first half-black president.  Physically he looks 100% black.  And it seems both his supporters and opponents treat him as such.   Strange as it may seem, not everyone is happy having a black president.  If there’s a really a problem it’s because he’s a liberal democrat, not a black.  Thomas Sowell is black, but I don’t hear many people complain about him.  Or Walter Williams.  In terms of politics, he is hardly any more liberal than Bill Clinton, yet he really brings out the crazy in a way Bill Clinton never did. 

Muslim?  This seems to come from his middle name, Hussein.   We may as well accuse him of being Saddam Hussein’s brother.  He also caught flak for being associated with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago – and he disavowed that.  Wright was a controversial, highly liberal black pastor and Obama was in his church.  How can he be Muslim AND be associated with a left-wing Christian pastor?  Points off for inconsistency, it seems.

The King Is Dead, Long Live The King.  I will not blame Obama for everything that happened in the US between January 20, 2009 and January 20, 2017.  We do not have a totalitarian dictatorship with an omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent ruler.  S**t happens every day, everywhere, and the majority it is outside the man’s ability or inclination to control.  That also applies to giving him credit for all the fantastic, wonderful stuff that may have happened on his watch. 

Legacy.  Military.  He drew down forces in Iraq, increased forces in Afghanistan, sent in the team that killed Osama Bin Laden, “managed” US involvement in Libya.  I’d say it’s about even in this area. I have seen no evidence that he sympathizes with Al Qaeda, ISIS, the Taliban, or any other radical Islamic organization.

ObamaCare.   This looks like it will be the #1 thing he’s left us with.  So far our experiment with socialized medicine has not been a success, and it remains to be seen if it can be salvaged or reformed into something that actually works and does what it claims to do. 

            Objectively I don’t consider him either a success OR a failure.  We’ve now had 44 Presidents, but very few really stand out as spectacular, either good or bad.  In fact, while we have had some superlative Presidents, like Washington, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Franklin Roosevelt, the “bad” presidents – James Buchanan comes to mind as the generally accepted “worst” – really were no worse than simply mediocre placeholders who prevented the country from being invaded by Mexico or Canada or being nuked.  Could Buchanan have prevented the Civil War?  Can we blame Hoover for the Great Depression?  Discuss.

"Let me be clear...."  As my buddy Dave put it, when the dust clears and the “It’s the WHITE HOUSE, N*GGA” cracker crowd is excluded as outliers, Obama will rank somewhere around President Rutherford B. Hayes and Millard Fillmore, two Presidents who came and left without amazing success or catastrophic failure, his primary distinction being his race.