Lots of folks are shaking their heads nowadays.
President Barak Obama, understandably, is making the most of the spectacular mission that bumped-off Threat Osama. It happened on his watch and, fair or not, snagging props for the good things is a handy perq that goes with residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Less defensibly, he’s offered nary a peep acknowledging, let alone commending, the terror-battling policies of his predecessor; policies he had sanctimoniously and persistently denounced in bygone days, but which made that mission possible.
Those wagging their noggins at the Commander-in-Chief’s boorishness are justified. But those surprised by his grandstanding? – what were they expecting? The political Left’s bread-and-butter long has been repudiating their rivals’ every accomplishment, and then living off the capital of those very same accomplishments. And Barack Obama is nothing if not the embodiment of all things Leftist.
Our exertions in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, “enhanced interrogation techniques”, aggressive intelligence measures, a more robustly funded military – all were formerly deplored by Team Obama as the diabolical machinations of the Rove/Cheney/George W. Bush axis. Yet, turns out all served as pivotal links in the chain of variables which lead American special operators to the squalid doorstep of the world’s most wanted jihadist.
The New York Post’s Michael Walsh has pithily summarized, “President Obama has now, with his targeted killing of bin Laden, essentially accepted every element of the Bush war-fighting doctrine in the battle against Islamic terror.”
Plainly, this pattern is no out-of-the-blue anomaly: before crowing about his newly-minted Mighty-Warlord status, the President was busily trumpeting record domestic oil harvests. Whitehouse.gov recently chortled, “[O]il production last year rose to its highest level since 2003″. Phooey on those $4/gallon gasoline prices! Ignore those forlornly idled Gulf Coast derricks! — things actually have never been better on the stateside fossil-fuels front.
Then again, our jauntily garrulous leader declined to mention any recent supply increases resulted from energy developments which emerged significantly during the tenures – once again – of dastardly, “Right-Wing” luminaries: Reagan and Bush 43. (For the record, on this score Bill Clinton also played a commendable role.)
Redstate.com’s Steve Mahley evaluates, “Obama Administration policies had nothing whatever to do with the production buildup in late ’09 into early 2010.” Additionally, any recent inventory growth can be traced to “industry ingenuity and competitiveness … [T]hey have excelled in spite of hostile Federal policies, not because of them.”
Again, it’s not just the present Chief Speechifier forsaking honest communication – this has been Liberal/Democratic stock-in-trade for decades. The insufferable Bill Clinton and his toadies are still high-fiving themselves for taming the 1990’s deficits and “leaving a surplus” for GWB’s maiden term. As with his wife’s current boss, though, the scalawag from Arkansas scants meaningful details: a GOP-dominated congress squeezed Clinton for essential tax-cuts, balanced budgets and welfare reform (he twice vetoed it before eventually signing the Republican-engineered legislation.)
Moreover, a Republican player named Reagan steered America victoriously through the Cold War, relieving the Clinton presidency of the burden of checking a predatory Soviet Union. Styled “the Peace Dividend”, that, along with GOP contributions referenced above, massively benefited not only the nation’s fisc, but the political fortunes of Bill Clinton, as well.
With wearying predictability, impudent Lefties win public office, commandeering the governmental driver’s seat for a season, and make a general hash of things. The grown-ups (Constitution-centered conservatives) then step up and set the house back in comparative order – whereupon the big-government, welfare-statist, America-is-the-problem, put-it-to-the-Man, punish-the-successful, kill-babies-and-wreck-marriage “Progressives” get another crack at thumping their chests over what the other guys have built up; and promptly get busy draining and devouring, ransacking and overthrowing it all over again.
The day following OBL’s vanquishment, some participants on morning TV’s gabfest The View were beside themselves with Barack-euphoria. A beaming Joy Behar, exulting “We love our President”, literally couldn’t sit still. The normally more dignified Barbara Walters effused mock pity for any 2012 Republican Oval-Office aspirant.
Reminded me of a gaggle of junior high-school ‘tweeners – which works on several levels, actually. Pubescents major in trashing adults’ “boring” but essential activities; stuff that makes life work, keeping the kiddos clothed, fed, safe. Thriving on what mature, serious folks provide, teenyboppers gigglingly ridicule “old people” efforts, sometimes, conversely, fancying they had a part making them happen.
Behold the contemporary Left – seems some pubescents never change.
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