Obama might be hopelessly in over his head, but he sure knows how to do a good photo op.
President Obama has been a terrible executive. His promises of “hope” and “change” have proven empty. He’s probably the most divisive President in my lifetime. However, that doesn’t mean every calamity is his fault.
Is the oil spill Obama’s fault? No. Is the administration’s handling of the spill’s political angle poor? Yes, but what are people expecting? The government isn’t the answer for every problem. The American people need to wake up. When a disaster strikes the solution isn’t always the government. The government has a role to play, but expecting it to bail us out is absurd.
Perhaps Obama deserves some criticism, but it should be for his his progressive view of government. Progressives don’t mind constant government involvement in our lives. Obama’s answer to every problem is more government. I guess that’s why some on the Left are blaming Bush for the oil spill. To a progressive a government failure can’t be laid at the feet of Obama. It has to Bush/Cheney and their love of deregulation. This is the Left’s only talking points on the financial crisis as well. The idea that government isn’t the solution, and in most cases is the problem, in unfathomable for the Left.
Leftists aren’t the only ones lost in political delusion. I’ve heard a lot about Obama’s plans for Memorial Day the past few days. The President is going to visit Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Illinois instead of Arlington National Cemetery. Some on the Right are up in arms about this and they’re wrong. Obama isn’t the first president to do this and it’s not that uncommon. John J. Miller over a The Corner sums it up well.
Some conservatives have criticized President Obama because he won’t pay homage to America’s fallen soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery today. Instead, he will be at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Illinois. This is a silly controversy and has the potential to make the complainers look petty. Thousands of American veterans are buried at national cemeteries that aren’t as famous as the one at Arlington. These heroes are worthy of presidential visits on Memorial Day, too.
Conservatives should spend more time pointing out the flaws of Obama’s ideology and less time complaining about things that don’t matter. I know it won’t happen, but at least I can dream.
Jonah Goldberg at The National Review mentioned something on Tuesday over at The Corner that I wanted to address. Goldberg was discussing the President role at the Memorial Day service at Arlington National Cemetery.
I think Obama played things pretty much perfectly at Arlington yesterday, continuing the tradition of laying a wreath at the memorial to the Confederate dead and starting a new one of leaving a presidential wreath at the monument to African-American soldiers who fought against the confederacy.
From a political standpoint the president did the right thing, but I think he should have stopped the practice that President Wilson started. Wilson was the first Democrat from the South to be elected after the Civil War and despite the adulation from “progressives” he was pretty dispicable.
Many Southern Democrats hoped — and had good reason to expect — an all-out Dixiecrat revival with Wilson in the Oval Office. But they had to settle for Wilson’s re-segregation of Washington D.C. and the federal bureaucracy and screenings of Birth of a Nation in the White House.
If the president took my suggestion he would face the backlash of many southerners who still have a great deal of pride in their “confederate past;” however, it’s been 140 years and it’s time to get over it. We shouldn’t be honoring a succession movement; especially when the main issue of slavery was so evil. Hopefully a president in the future goes back to the single wreath to honor all Americans who have given their lives to the United States.
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