It's About Trust

The President doesn't have it.

School districts in Missouri, Texas, Virgina, Minnesota, and the President's own Illinois have decided not to show the President's speech to children tomorrow. Many more districts are allowing parents to "opt out." In other districts, parents are apparently considering keeping their children home tomorrow.

Democrats and lefty commentators have been grousing that parents and school administrators didn't just fall to their knees and thank Obama for deigning to reach out to children. They don't get it. They point to previous school speeches by President's Reagan and Bush 41. Even White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs called the concern about giving Obama unfiltered access "silly season."

But it's not silly and it's not an unreasonable concern. The President has given us little reason to believe he is capable of delivering a non-political, non-polemical speech. Every time he opens his mouth he expresses a vision of America much further to the Left than most of us are comfortable with. Parents and school districts rightly exercise their right not to have their children's ears filled with that.

The President's speeches are filled with vague enemies that stand in the way of "progress". Only, they are his enemies, not our enemies. For example, in his healthcare speeches the enemies are Republicans and health insurers. In his first speech to Congress back in February, the enemies were the wealthy, banks, and Bush 43. Parents rightly wonder, "Who is he going to blame now?"

Gibbs calls it silly season. That does nothing to allay parental concerns. And it is just one more example of the Democratic response to any challenge: call names. During the past month, the Democrats have spent more words on nastily describing opponents than actually trying to sell their policies. I'm sure I've missed some, but at my last reckoning we've been called "the mob", "terrorists", "racists", "like the KKK", "traitors", "evil-mongers", "fascists", and the former chairman of the DNC said we wanted to kill the president.

This namecalling isn't coming from the Democratic fringe. This came from party leaders, congressmen, and well-known commentators. It ran in the major papers and on cable news. Given this behavior from the President's allies, it's no wonder people are a little hesitant to let him speak to their children. The president's own race-inspired name-calling about the "stupid" Cambridge Police Department certainly hasn't helped.

In short, it's about trust. People are finding it hard to trust the President. He's out of touch with American mainstream. He has surrounded himself with people who embrace disgusting beliefs, including Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers, not to mention Van Jones. He reaches out to tyrants like Ahmadinejad and Chavez. He oppresses democratic countries like Honduras and threatens to abandon our strongest ally in the Middle East, Israel.

That makes him, in many eyes, fundamentally untrustworthy. Democrats assure us that the President's speech will just be about staying in school. Why should we believe them?

posted by Gabriel Malor at 10:55 AM

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