President Obama received a well-deserved slap in the face on the first anniversary of his inauguration as the 44th President of the United States. As everyone except Rip Van Wrinkle knows by now, the voters of Massachusetts, one of the most liberal states in the country, rebelled against President Obama by electing a Republican to fill the seat in the U.S. Senate fondly referred to by the Democrats and members of the media as the “Kennedy seat.” The turn of events in the last several weeks has been amazing. I didn’t expect it, and I am shocked and surprised, but I am also pleased that even the voters in a traditionally liberal state are waking up and rebelling against the style and substance of the Obama Administration.
How did this happen? All of the political analysts are expressing their varying views about how President Obama and the Democratic Party suffered such a humiliating defeat. In my view, they brought it on themselves. They deserved it, just as the Republicans deserved a humiliating defeat when they lost control of both Houses of Congress in 2006. You can call it poetic justice, which refers to a literary device in which virtue is ultimately rewarded or vice punished. In this case, I’m not sure there was any virtue on the part of President Obama’s opponents to be rewarded, but there was plenty of vice that deserved to be punished, and it was.
In my opinion, a combination of factors led to the revolt in Massachusetts. All of these factors combined were more than the voters could stomach. Among the factors that led to the revolt are the following:
(1) During the 2008 Presidential campaign, President Obama was able to convince large numbers of moderate and conservative voters to ignore his record as the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate. He ran for President as a moderate, but he quickly returned to his liberal instincts and positions as soon as he was elected
(2) During the Presidential campaign, President Obama convinced voters he was a different type of politician and would bring a new style to Washington. He promised openness, transparency, and bipartisanship. Instead, he has governed as a rough-and-tumble, down-and-dirty Chicago politician who is willing to do almost anything, including buying votes with other people’s money, to accomplish his objectives. He completely excluded members of the minority party from secret and closed negotiations involving a major and controversial piece of legislation that, if implemented, would have dramatically altered and restructured one-sixth of the U.S. economy. By doing so, he received no support from the minority party, and he created widespread public cynicism about the political process and about his Administration.
(3) Because they controlled the Presidency and both Houses of Congress, President Obama and the Democrats felt they could do whatever they wanted to do. After promising bipartisanship, they maintained a highly partisan political atmosphere where there was no room for compromise, where there were few checks and balances in the political process, and where they felt free to ignore public opinion and sought to impose their ideological agenda on the rest of the country.
(4) Day after day and week after week, the President and his party have been proposing new taxes, higher taxes, and more intrusive government regulations on businesses and investors. The result, not surprisingly, has been less investment, slower economic growth, and higher unemployment. Other than the threat of terrorism, the biggest problem facing the country today is the high rate of unemployment. President Obama’s policies have discouraged the new investment necessary for job creation.
(5) Since President Obama’s election, the government has represented the only segment of the economy that is growing and creating new jobs. The result is that more people are consuming wealth produced by others and fewer people are producing wealth. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand we are heading down a dead-end street.
(6) After rightly campaigning against President Bush’s fiscal irresponsibility, President Obama is presiding over a federal budget deficit three times the size of the budget deficit during President Bush’s last year in office. The Obama Administration has asked Congress to increase the amount of debt the government can issue to $14.3 trillion. The voters in Massachusetts and elsewhere understand government spending is out of control. The government’s staggering indebtedness has led to widespread feelings of pessimism and hopelessness, to concerns the country’s best days are behind us, and to the realization our children will not enjoy the same lifestyle we have enjoyed.
(7) Most citizens think the primary responsibility of the federal government is to protect the public and keep the public safe from terrorists and other foreign enemies. The Obama Administration has come across as lacking the necessary focus on national defense and as being soft on terrorists. Scott Brown, the newly elected U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, summed up the feelings of a lot of people when he said during his victory speech, “In dealing with terrorists, our tax dollars should pay for weapons to stop them, not lawyers to defend them.”
(8) After a year in office, President Obama continues to blame all of the nation’s problems on President Bush. He refuses to accept responsibility for decisions he has made since taking office. This strategy worked—and perhaps even had some merit—during President Obama’s first six months in office, but it has not been well received by most people since then.
Overall, my view is that President Obama has had a terrible first year in office. He has been far worse than I expected and feared. He has lost respect and credibility, he has lost the broad support he once enjoyed, and he has deeply disappointed those who thought he had the potential to create a new political atmosphere and to bring the country together. His defeat in Massachusetts this week was poetic justice.
Is the ballgame over for President Obama? I don’t think so. We are still in the first quarter of a four-quarter ballgame. President Obama has plenty of time to recover. If he is as smart as his supporters think he is, he will change his strategy, just as any good coach would do whose team falls far behind during the first quarter. If President Obama changes his approach to governance, his first year in office will be forgotten by the time he runs for re-election. If he does not, he will go down in history as a miserable failure. These are my opinions. At least for the time being, you are free to have and express your own.
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