Hopkins
Using a time honored convention, Disney productions created an animated musical, one that was ripe to be brought to Broadway and expanded to full glory. "The Lion King" follows in the tradition of many Disney productions, and is still touring the USA, having recently stopped at the Fox in St. Louis. It is this movie, then Broadway musical, that serves as the metaphor today, albeit with a crucial spelling change.
Unlike prior years, I chose not to watch the speech of Barack Obama at this year's Democratic Convention. While I was otherwise engaged - folding socks or something else of higher priority - his speech came through into the other room. When I heard these words - "You didn't elect me to tell you want you want to hear...You elected me to tell you the truth." - I stopped dead in my tracks.
From one with such a pronounced allergy to the truth, the statement dripped with the hypocrisy that has hallmarked his entire term. It was a moment of truly unprecedented and unbridled gall, made so clear in both the truth of the statement itself and the deceptive falsity of the speaker.
Barack Obama was not sworn in on January 20, 2008 as much as he was anointed, more king than president. With promises of not only new jobs, but sustained and tangible economic growth, he was the answer to a Nation hungry for a solution - any solution. He was to usher in a new era of bi-partisan cooperation, a transitional figure who reached across racial, social and party lines, bringing forth a new time of peace and prosperity, one in which the "oceans would no longer rise" - I still do not get that one - shovel-ready jobs would pour forth like manna from Heaven, and the world would cease its hatred of the USA.
Sadly, these promises, and so many more, were not kept, the truth ignored, brushed aside by the bellowing winds of ego and ineptitude.
The promised "most open Administration in history" contemptuously ignored the proper inquiry of Congress into 'Fast and Furious,' the program of the U.S. Justice Department that supplied guns to Mexican drug lords, protecting in the process those whose poor judgment created such a fiasco.
The candidate who railed against unemployment north of 8 percent has become the President unable to move the number any lower, despite the wasteful and ineffective stimulus packages, pandering and rewarding supporters with crony deals ala Solyndra. As the reality became an obvious disconnection from the promise, it was revealed that the new Messiah was in truth nothing more than a hack Chicago politician, and an amateur one at that.
In the beginning of his term, Obama was given a Democratic House and a filibuster proof Democratic Senate. How did he chose to use this power, his to use or abuse? Instead of reaching across party lines as promised to craft legislation out of a consensus, the ward boss-in-chief crammed down America's throat Obamacare, the grossly unpopular solution to an acknowledged problem. The minority was ignored. Naked power was employed without mercy. Chicago style. The backlash cost Nancy Pelosi the Speaker's chair. Let us hope it continues, extracting the final price by installing a new President.
Faced with multiple problems - the type of chaos that he claimed to be able to calm and cure, causing the electorate to turn to him in desperation in the first place - he chose not to "work everyday for the American people," but instead played more golf, held more fundraisers and spent more taxpayer dollars on family vacations than his three predecessors COMBINED.
Rolling up the sleeves on your $150 shirt does not mean you're working. Once again, illusion trumps reality.
But by far the worst falsehood is his claim to have "inherited" problems. No one spends two years and over $800 million to get unrequested problems. He sought the job. He claimed he could do the job, fix the problems. Then...he got the job. It is his legacy. No longer can he be permitted to blame others...particularly George W. Bush. He must be judged on his record alone. He cannot be permitted to pass the buck backwards four years. Watching the 44th resident of the White House, plain spoken Harry Truman must be turning over in his grave, wondering what happened to the Democratic party he once knew.
By any objective and reasonable standard, the Obama presidency is a failure. But it is especially delinquent when measured against the promises of the candidate. Americans are more polarized, more divided than ever. While there may be many reasons, one certainly is his time in the White House, and the tone it has set.
It is not his race, despite the harpings of those who view all of life through the prism of skin color. If anything, he has reaped the value from those who see him as Black first and President second.
No, the failure lies within. In his deficiencies and our color blinded inability to behold. He has deceived. He has failed. He has not united, but divided.
It is indeed time "to let him go." The path is clear. Be not afraid.