Thread: Obama Fundamentally Transforms in 25 Failed Narratives: From Post-Racial President to

Obama Fundamentally Transforms in 25 Failed Narratives: From Post-Racial President to Pen-and-Phone

By Kyle Becker 4 hours ago

These 25 now-failed narratives tell the story of the decline and fall of the Obama presidency. (Click on the links for background information.)

1. No Red States, No Blue States



When virtually unknown Illinois candidate Barack Obama waxed poetic about transcending “red state” and “blue state” politics, that was before he said “if they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Latinos should “punish (their) enemies,” and voters should get “revenge” in the 2012 election.

2. Post-Partisan President

After posing as a historic new kind of leader able to soar above the fray of politics-as-usual, the newly elected president rammed through a divisive agenda without bi-partisan support, reportedly labeled his opponents “derogatory terms,” and ushered in the most divided nation in 70 years.

3. Post-Racial President

After Obama graciously told the gathered crowd in Grant Park, Chicago after his election win that “this is your victory,” referring to his successful campaign as a defining moment in the civil rights struggle, he would oversee a presidency where nearly any serious opponent to his big government program would be decried as “racist.”

4. Obama the “Moderate”

Even though nothing in Barack Obama’s background suggests that he is a “moderate,” pundits pushed forth the narrative that Obama was a lot less liberal than he actually was. Anyone who had read one of his two biographies Dreams from My Father would know he ‘chose his friends carefully‘ in college, including Marxist professors. His Senate voting record was rated the most liberal by National Journal and to the left of self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders.

5. Hope & Change



One of the ubiquitous slogans from the Obama campaign was “Hope and Change.” The political upstart would oversee the worst recovery since the Great Depression, accumulate nearly $7 trillion in debt, foster an economic environment with the lowest labor participation rate in 34 years, and preside over an unemployment rate that decreases mainly because people give up looking for full-time work.

6. Change We Can Believe In



After drumming up his audience into fainting spells with his vapid oratory about “change,” the change would be far less a reversal of the Bush years (specifically, under a Democratic Congress) than an extreme continuation of them. Escalating debt, more wars, less transparency, “phony” scandals, and abuse of the U.S. government for political purposes became commonplace under Obama.

7. Yes We Can!



“Yes we can!”… another slogan that is less a policy platform than a partisan attitude empowering the president to take liberty with the nation’s laws and institutions. The phrase was ripped off from Latin American socialist movements: “Si, se puede!”

8. We Are the Ones We’ve Been Waiting For



The narcissistic slogan was a preface for “Yes we can!” in a famous speech of Obama’s. The language is reminiscent of the “big man of history” narrative framing Obama as a leader ushering in a progressive tide to the utopian promiseland – overcoming the conservative reticence of ‘misguided’ Americans who believe their nation is great.

9. Honest Leadership & Open Government



The posturing of Barack Obama as a new kind of politician was never more ludicrous than when he participated with other Democrats rebranding the party image as open and honest. The president became infamous for such lies as Politifact’s Lie of the Year – “you can keep your plan” – and more recently, he confessed that no, you can’t “keep your doctor” under Obamacare. President Obama has earned multiple four pinocchio lies from the WaPo fact-checker.

10. Most Transparent Administration Ever



Shortly after assuming the office of the presidency, Obama proffered the notion that his administration would be “the most open and transparent in history” and he laughably double down on the talking point in 2013. A lawyer with expertise in FOIA requests Katherine Meyer called Obama’s White House “the worst” on such requests, and left-leaning journalist Glenn Greenwald catalogued a damning indictment of the president’s claims of transparency.

11. Obama the “Peace” President



Despite revisionist history to the contrary, Barack Obama failed to bring a rapid close to America’s wars overseas, as promised. The “anti-war” candidate, after inexplicably winning a Nobel Peace Prize just for showing up, would announce an end the Iraq War more than a year after his firm withdrawal date, and still has American troops immersed in the Afghanistan War he promised to end – overseeing 74% of all fatalities in that long war.

12. Restore America’s Standing in the World



In 2009, Obama boldly claimed that he had restored America’s standing in the world (he had promised to do so in a 2008 debate). He proclaimed a “New Beginning” with the Muslim world in his Cairo address and a “reset” with Russia. Nonetheless, the Middle East would erupt in protests directed against the U.S. (such as the American embassy protests across the Islamic crescent on the anniversary of 9/11), and Russia would prove to be a consistent adversary. A poll of world opinion in 2012 showed a dramatic slide in global opinion regarding Obama’s policies.

13. “Stimulus”



Progressives routinely name programs after their intentions, and act like reality will magically conform to their desires. “Stimulus” was an $812 billion spending bill, chock full of waste and political kickbacks, that was pushed through as an “immediate” measure to remedy a dire economic situation. The pledge was that the plan would lift 2 million out of poverty (6 million actually fell into poverty by early 2012) and unemployment would be reduced to under 5% by 2013. We’re still close to 7% and the U-6 measure is over 12%.

14. Shovel-Ready Jobs

While at a meeting with his Jobs and Competitiveness Council in 2011, Obama joked about construction jobs that failed to materialize as a part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (aka “stimulus”), quipping that “Shovel-ready that was not as shovel-ready as we expected.”

15. Green Jobs



The oft-touted “green” economy that Obama repeatedly alluded to was as ephemeral as a cloudy day. Although in 2008 candidate Obama claimed he would create 5 million “green jobs,” the New York Times reported in 2011 that Obama failed to live up to this promise. An audit of green jobs by the Brookings Institution in 2012 showed that of 2.7 million “green jobs,” most of these were bus drivers, sewage workers, and related types of work. CBS found that taxpayers had paid over $11 million per so-called “green job.”

16. Recovery Summer/ “Jobless Recovery”



In 2010, President Obama and Vice President Biden triumphantly declared a “recovery summer.” But intertwined throughout this presumably idyllic moment in American history was the narrative of a “jobless recovery” and the uncharacteristic cheerleading of a rising stock market by the news media. The Obama economy funnelled gains to the richest Americans, while median incomes declined more than 8% by late 2012.

17. Truth Team/ Attack Watch



A prevalent theme throughout the Obama years is that the White House’s detractors were in on some insidious plot formed by a right-wing conspiracy. The narrative that the American people were being misled by a “disinformation” campaign spawned numerous projects: Flag@whitehouse.gov (instantly derided as a “snitch” website), Attack Watch (“fight the smears”), and the Truth Team (apparently reporting to Minitrue).

18. Phony Scandals



By 2012, the Obama presidency was engulfed in numerous scandals: NSA spying, IRS targeting of conservatives, Fast & Furious and Benghazi. In the initial stages of these scandals, the president acted like he had just found about them on the news, while later flat-out calling them “phony scandals.” After weeks of the president and his press secretary Jay Carney trotting out this line, the majority of Americans were still not buying the spin. Nearly 80% of those surveyed thought the 9/11 anniversary terrorist attack at Benghazi should be “taken seriously,” while 69% wanted answers about the NSA’s spying program.

19. War on Women

The “war on women” was a narrative contrived out of thin air by the Obama re-election campaign team, which sought to exploit favorable female sentiment towards the president in the 2012 election. As if ripped from the pages of a “structural feminist” lecture guide, the attack insinuated that non-Democrats and non-leftists were engaged in a nefarious plot to keep women down. Yet only a third of women surveyed agreed with this charge.

20. Life of Julia



Consistent with the Democrats’ charges that those not belonging to their party were engaged in a “war on women” was a creepy website contrasting the “Life of Julia” under a President Obama versus that of a hypothetical President Romney. The slide presentation alleged that women needed the paternalization of government in order to succeed, rather than freedom and opportunity in a market system. Of course, the website didn’t mention that the White House paid female staffers nearly 20% less than men, and that some of the presidency’s anti-market rhetoric was pure mythology, as a feminist writer exposed.

21. Al Qaeda is “On the Run”



Reinforcing his hawkish bonafides (while declaring the “war on terror” over), President Obama claimed dozens of times that al Qaeda was gravely diminished and famously said the terrorist group was “on the path to defeat” at the 2012 DNC convention. His Department of Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson would later state that al Qaeda was “on the run.” But an intelligence review in 2014 would find that al Qaeda controls more territory than at any time in its history, confirming along with the Benghazi terrorist attack that the terror outfit was anything but “decimated.”

22. One Percenters



Leapfrogging off the Occupy Wall Street meme of the 99% and the (top) 1% of income earners, Obama would decry the “one percent” in speeches while telling the Occupiers that “you were the reason I ran for office.” But the multimillionaire Obama would frequently hobnob with celebs and billionaires and oversee a period of increasing income inequality; more so than the period under President Bush (no increase).

23. War on Income Inequality



While pivoting rhetorically from creating jobs to a war on income inequality, the president would nonetheless admit in 2013 that 95% of income gains had gone to the top 1% on his watch. While the rationalization for more state intervention into the economy may be to reduce income inequality (rather than reduce poverty or improve people’s quality of life, for examples), income inequality tends to worsen globally with more state control. Free markets tend to mean more income mobility, job opportunity, and economic equality.

24. Pen and Phone



In Obama’s 2014 State of the Union address, the president declared openly that he would go it alone if necessary, and would “take action” with or without Congress. He threatened, “I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone. And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward.” The executive branch has assumed legislative powers that are illegal or unconstitutional. As a liberal Constitutional expert put it, Obama is “The very danger the Constitution was designed to avoid.”

25. Forward



The 2012 campaign theme “Forward” has a long legacy in radical regimes in world history. It is geared towards obstinately forcing through a political agenda in defiance of economic conditions and legal constraints. It dismisses the negative impact of radical policies with a blithe assurance that future rewards will outweigh the necessarily painful short-term costs.

It is an article of faith; it signals to the demoralized, the doubters, and the unbelievers “yes we can” push through this “fundamental transformation” of America and “yes we can” overcome the realities of the here-and-now and “yes we can” make the nation perfectly equal and just.

If only we cede a little more liberty to the state, if only we give the masterminds a little more money, if only we shed a little more blood in sacrifice to the holy cause… then our burdens would be lifted from our shoulders and we could transcend our mortal plight. We wouldn’t have to do the hard work of freeing ourselves and pursuing our dreams, the government would deliver our dreams to us. We wouldn’t have to seek meaning in life, we could seek meaning in the unified mass. Through the shared goal of pursuing some lofty purpose, marching side-by-side in some abstract war, never paying attention to the morality of the means or the human wreckage left in our wake, we would keep our eyes on the prize, striding brazenly into the sun until our retinas are burned, blind to the damage all around us and the destructiveness of our crusade…

From the very moment that Barack Obama magically appeared, deus ex machina-like, on the national stage, savvy political observers knew this “messiah” would transform from the symbolic aspiration of a unified and fair America to a divisive figure shrewdly exploiting the nation’s rifts.
The free society of our ancestors and the birthright of liberty due future generations would be snatched away by this silver-tongued charlatan; and the power assumed for the presumed purpose of “social justice” would be stolen away from individuals: the power to better our own lives, the choice on how to serve others, and the invaluable gift of freedom to pursue our own dreams.

Obama Breaks the Law Once Again, Effectively Suspends Individual Mandate Without News Media Reporting It


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