Barack Obama lacks for almost nothing in his role as President of the United States. When it comes to chutzpah, it’s a quality nobody can ever say with a straight face that he has in short supply.
In a (supposedly non-partisan) panel at a poverty summit at Georgetown University, the President lit into Fox News about their coverage of the poor and extended it to House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. He then took a shot at the media as whole:
I think that the effort to suggest that the poor are sponges, leeches, don’t want to work, are lazy, are undeserving, got traction. And look, it’s still being propagated. I have to say that if you watch Fox News on a regular basis, it is a constant venue. They will find folks who make me mad. I don’t know where they find them. They’re all like, “I don’t want to work. I just want a free Obama Phone, or whatever.” And that becomes an entire narrative that gets worked up. And very rarely do you hear an interview of a waitress, which is much more typical — who is raising a couple of kids and doing everything right but still can’t pay the bills.
And so, if we’re going to change how Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) think, we’re going to have to change how our body politic thinks, which means we’re going to have to change how the media reports on these issues, and how people’s impressions of what it’s like to struggle in this economy looks like. And how budgets connect to that. And that’s a hard process because that requires a much broader conversation than typically we have on the nightly news.
It is often in these rare unscripted moments — when Obama’s comments are not prepared or he doesn’t have the benefit of a teleprompter — that his cynicism shines so bright, it’s more intense than the light that shined through the Staff of Ra in the map room for Indiana Jones.
It underscores not just disagreement, but rather contempt for those who do not think the way he does. This is not a new phenomenon. This is standard operating procedure for the left. There is no such thing as a policy disagreement or even an ideological disagreement. There are just motives.
And the left will tell you conservatives are motivated in part by evil, for what they do or what to do. Many times at this point, liberals will hold up their hands in front of their chest, palms extended and say, “Whoa….I never said you were evil.”
Really?
Why is any attempt to reform our welfare system met with howls of wanting “children to go hungry”? Why is any attempt to reform entitlements met with the idea we want to put the boot to Grandma but we’re just waiting for her to be weak enough after having to eat nothing but bread and water? Education reforms? Attacks on teachers. Pro life? “You want to control vaginas!”
People with noble intentions don’t want others to go hungry nor do they want to hurt their Grandma, attack teachers or control a woman’s lady parts. Evil people do.
This is all part and parcel of Obama’s condition: For him to be seen as “right” then his opponents can’t be seen merely as having different ideas.
They have to be seen as the enemy.
I wrote on this nearly two years ago about the issue of race. It’s difficult to have an “honest conversation” about race when you’re always being called a racist.
The problem for the President is that he is so lacking in self-awareness that he cannot understand why he can’t get anything done and why his presidency has largely been a failure.
If Obama were a Game of Thrones character he would be a male version of Daenerys Targaryen. She:
1. Was elevated to a position she was clearly not prepared for.
2. Said a bunch of things which made people worship her
3. Found that she didn’t have the ability to actually govern and instead had controlled tantrums leading the very people who once worshiped her to have second thoughts.
The Presidents chance to have a real impact on poverty in this country has passed him by. He used up all his political capital on Obamacare and has spent the last several years wagging his finger at those who cannot comprehend his amazing brilliance and attacking the motives of those who disagree with his ideas.
He has a little over 18 months left in office. In Game of Thrones talk, “Winter is coming.” If he hasn’t learned yet from his mistakes, he never will.