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President Obama needs to fail By Michael C. Guilmette Jr. Originally published on July 9, 2009, in the Connersville News-Examiner. There is an amazing amount of fawning support for President Barack Obama.
ABC News, in providing a day of wall-to-wall coverage of Obama’s health care proposal, abdicated their roles as unbiased arbiters of public opinion and watchdog on government officials to curry favor with an administration that already carries a most-favored rating in newsrooms across the country. The public, too, has held firm backing the president. The latest approval polling conducted by Rasmussen shows that 54 percent of Americans approve of Obama’s job in office. That number is down from the 62 percent he enjoyed back in January, but a majority of the U.S. population still throws their lot in with him. The president is using his popularity to push through his wide-ranging left-wing agenda, headlined by his health care overhaul proposal to cover the alleged multitudes of people with no access to medical insurance and his notorious cap and trade plan aimed at reducing so-called greenhouse gas emissions. Both of these proposals are dangerous, but for more reasons than are debated in the talking head circuit. Obama’s cap and trade plan, the kitschy-named American Clean Energy and Security Act, is a dangerous plan that will significantly raise energy costs for the average American household. And President Obama is OK with that. “Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket,” the president said. That is somewhat of an understatement. Crunching the numbers, Heritage Foundation researchers found that a family of four would see their average annual energy bill increase by $1,500 — far higher than the meager estimates of $80 to $175 per household numbers the administration and bill supporters are touting. These numbers don’t even factor in the ancillary costs this massive regulatory system would generate — such as higher costs for everything produced using energy, which is everything. Coupling that with the likelihood this plan will do little to change global temperatures — the planet is just too big — should be enough to drive a stake through this legislation, but the administration is plunging headlong into this folly, emboldened by the narrow victory in the House of Representatives on June 26, thanks to eight sellout Republicans. The so-called consensus on global warming is falling apart as more and more scientists back away from Al Gore’s contention that the planet has a fever and we are the cause of it. Each month, there are increasing reports that one region after another is experiencing record cool temperatures, continuing in line with the slight but appreciable declining temperature trend we have been experiencing since 1998. My sporadic use of air conditioning so far this summer is anecdotal evidence — at least to me — that the promised heat waves may just be promises. This plan is merely one example of why Obama’s agenda must fail, but there is a far more reaching reason why he needs to fail and why it would not only be good for all of us, but for him as well. Obama’s popularity and lack of effective opposition are doing him a disservice by furthering the notion that everything he does is correct, and that everyone agrees with him. It also grants him a falsely earned air of leadership. As any successful sports coach will admit, it is easy to be in charge when everything is going your way. The true test of leadership, however, is how a leader handles himself and his situation when things are going awry. So far, Obama hasn’t had to deal with a great deal of failure in his presidency. The closest he has had to endure is Congress denying him funding to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, but that is an issue that still garners him considerable public support. One of Obama’s greatest disadvantages is his lack of executive experience, making him arguably the most untested man we have had in the Oval Office in the modern era. Presidents usually have had the opportunity to cut their teeth by first being a state governor, as was the case for four of his five predecessors, or at very least by holding some other high executive office. Obama has done neither. Unfortunately, the time for a shakeout cruise has passed, and the future of this nation lies in the hands of a man who still has one very troubling question mark attached to his name — What will he do when things do not go his way? It may be past due, but Obama needs a healthy dose of failure if he is to grow as a president — or at very least, for us to see whether or not he deserves to stay in office. • Guilmette is managing editor of the News-Examiner. He may be contacted at mguilmette@newsexaminer.com. |
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Copyright © 2009, Michael C. Guilmette Jr. |
Pundits from one end of the media cycle to another have spent the last six months extolling the virtues of our novel president. His message of ‘hope’ and ‘change’ are still a hallmark of the coverage he gets, to the point where major media outlets have bent over backwards to support and promote his agenda.
