The debate Wednesday was a “reset” of the
presidential campaign.
Luck is what happens when
preparation meets opportunity.
Luck is not always the
residue of design, and Romney was lucky that the first debate concerned the
economy . . . America can be . . . a society in which markets — the voluntary
collaboration of creative individuals — allocate opportunity.
If the debate can become
an inflection point, a launching pad for the rest of the race, it won't be
merely the end of the beginning of the general election campaign. It could
become the beginning of the end of the failed Obama presidency.
It is common
knowledge that a politician would promise anything and everything just to
secure the electorates’ votes. A joke
very popular in Philippine college campuses in the sixties I deem most
appropriate to illustrate this popular belief.
The narrative goes:
a politician in the campaign stomp pompously promised, “if I’m elected I’ll
build you the most magnificent bridge you have ever seen in your lifetime.” To which a heckler interjected: “but we don’t
have any river hereabouts.” Whereat the
politician retorted, “I’ll build you an equally splendid river to go with it,
you impertinent dolt.”
Unfortunately, “we
the people” are more often than not taken in by every two-bit politician’s
subterfuge and machinations. Else, if
such were not the case, no career politician would ever prosper on the
taxpayers’ dime and retire from politics far wealthier than when he/she first
entered the arena. And there would have
been far more politicians who would manage to earn the grade into being
recognized and remembered as honorable statesmen, and/or stateswomen as the
case may be.
Dictionary.com suggests that the
labels politician and statesman may be deemed synonymous and
interchangeable. I strongly beg to
disagree. The simplest difference between
the two is the statesman happens to be a politician with a conscience. The statesman approaches governance and
policy formulation with principled moorings.
On the other hand, the politician’s reckonings don’t go beyond
expedience and leverage for future and more lucrative political gains.
Secondly, a
statesman has the ability and intellectual fortitude to reach out for that much
needed honorable compromise with the opposition to get one’s agenda
implemented. Pres. Obama bullied,
bribed, and squandered the people’s money to get ObamaCare passed in Congress
without a single vote from the opposition.
Mr. Obama had this to say about the GOP joining Democratic efforts for reform: “They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.” One can only imagine the imagery this comment will conjure for all parties involved.
The one factoid
that was missed, nay, deliberately avoided noticing by everybody in pundit-land
with the notable exceptions of Rush
Limbaugh and Donald Trump was that Pres.
Obama is a fraud. He was built up by the
media in 2008 as the “Manchurian Candidate,” and the nation
had swallowed the goodies hook, line and sinker.
Contrary to the
media narrative, I assert, contend and maintain that Barack Hussein Obama has
been the dumbest individual to have disgraced the Oval Office. Here is the compelling bill of circumstantial
particulars:
1.
He is reduced to an incoherent blob when
deprived of his teleprompter as demonstrated in last Wednesday’s debate;
2.
He spent reported $millions on a horde of
lawyers to keep his college records~~transcripts, theses, term papers, etc.
sealed off from the public;
3.
He is unique in being the President of
Harvard Law Review without a single article, scholarly or otherwise, attributed
to his by-line;
4.
He has never passed a budget in his first
term because he could not persuade a single vote in Congress to support his
agenda.
These are not
hallmarks of leadership. These are
hallmarks of a loafer and a dolt. He
fiddled and hob-nobbed with celebrities in Las Vegas and Hollywood on campaign
fund raising stomps while our sovereign territories were crushed and burnt in
the four corners of the globe throughout the Islamic world. How low can a President get before you
recognize the symptoms and come forth with the proper diagnosis of the disease?
The ultimate
measure of a politician’s potential to evolve into a statesman is the way he
handles the fallout of any debacle. So
far Pres. Obama has failed miserably this putrescence test, respecting last
Wednesday’s debate. Not only has he
indulged ad nauseam in Argumentum
ad hominem, as behooves a Chicago rabble rouser, he also had deployed
the entire Democratic Party machine to foment at its basest abyss the politics
of personal destruction.
Undoubtedly, this
demeans the dignity of the Presidency as an institution. Above and beyond that, it diminishes the pride
and glory of history that has been the Idea of the United States of America.
Considering that
there are still two debates scheduled, for the sake of civility and to
recalibrate his bearings, I beseech the President to heed the counsel of William Shakespeare in,
Henry IV, Part II, to wit:
“Then,
happy low, lie down!
Uneasy
lies the head that wears a crown.”
Recalibration is absolutely necessary for the President
shall be circumscribed by Agatha Reed’s
standards for fairness in the movie “Goodbye, My Fancy” to “never play fair unless you respect the person you are dealing with.” Ergo, as he continues to scornfully demonstrate
his contempt for Gov. Romney in the campaign trail, his endless pontification
on fairness would be reduced to an hideous exhibition of hypocrisy, putridly repugnant
to a populace hungry for leadership.
The Campaign Debates Part 2]
{Below catalogues remarks some in Pundit-Land has recorded for posterity on
the first Presidential Debate as reflected in my short reading list}
“. . . Political operatives say they hate oppo
because they hate to lower the tone of the national discourse. The truth is,
oppo is bad for business. The press goes into full Lascivious Puritan mode,
spreads the dirt and then tries to nail the provider. When everyone knows a
strategist won dirty, he becomes controversial . . .”
“.
. . Mr. Obama has skated by with platitudes, lies, misrepresentations and
"cool," while the nation we love, still "the last best hope of
earth," seemed to be sliding toward the drain.
“.
. . Obama seems to be identifying a problem, except that his description is
false. And if it were true, why did Obama do nothing about it when his party
controlled both houses of Congress?”
“America
is not prospering economically. No matter what Obama says he's done, the facts
are that personal income is down, good jobs are hard to get, the debt is north
of $16 trillion, and everybody who has health insurance is paying higher
premiums. And don't even ask about gas prices.”
“It
was the biggest rout since Agincourt. . . . With a remarkable display of
confidence, knowledge and nerve, Mitt Romney won the first 2012 debate going
away.
“Romney
didn’t just demonstrate authoritative command of a myriad of domestic issues.
He was nervy about it, taking the president on frontally, not just relentlessly
attacking, but answering every charge leveled against him — with a three-point
rebuttal.”
“As
the president makes his case for four more years, he does so without
emphasizing what he has accomplished or what he intends to do. Instead, he
concentrates on the culture of personal celebrity.
“When
backed into a corner, as in Wednesday’s debate with Republican challenger Mitt
Romney, he defaults to class warfare.
“If
Obama wins re-election, he may claim a mandate to advance a class-based,
redistributionist agenda — because that is exactly what he has run on.”
“The
problem for Obama is not that his performance was disastrous, but rather that
it was his normal workmanlike coasting. But this time, and for the first time,
he was pitted against a skilled debater who had both the better argument and
the better intellectual artillery to deliver it. . . . For Obama to win the
next debate, Romney will have to be uncharacteristically bad, Obama will have
to be uncharacteristically good, and the moderator will not only have to be
engaged but also unashamedly hyper-partisan. All of the above can happen, but
it is unlikely.”
~~Victor Davis Hanson,
“Sans
teleprompter, he repeated the talking points of his television ads and, when
Romney responded sharply, he had nothing to fall back on.
We
saw the president who found it fitting to jet off to campaign in Las Vegas the
day after the first murder of a U.S. ambassador in 33 years.
.
. .
Obama
will surely perform better in his next two debates. Romney may not perform as
well. But the first numbers suggest the firewall may be crumbling. We'll see if
it holds.”
~~Michael Barone, Romney's
Debate
Win
Opens Cracks
in Obama Firewall
This is 4th in a continuing series leading to the election on how the Obama Regime is cutting down "to size" anything American to fit into his post-colonial ideological template that all the ills of the world have been caused by Americans using a disproportionate share of the world's resources at the expense of the rest of the world.
ReplyDelete