State of the Union: Crittenden's Take

He sums up my feelings.

I like to pose as mainly objecting to this jackass on policy, and keep the level of emotion restricted to snide comments, but the fact of the matter is I'm starting to hate this guy.

After that bizarre, defiant, blame-dodging, position-ditching, doubling-back, credit-grabbing performance, I’d be inclined to call Barack Obama a joke. But protocol and manners require me to call him the president of the United States, and after all, we’re stuck with him in that role for another three years, at least.

I don’t really want to go down the road the left did, with their rabid hatred and childish insults of George Bush. It’s probably too late to swear off that. I’ve tried really hard to be respectful to the office and the fact that he holds it. But I’m beginning to get the left’s visceral reaction to everything our often inarticulate, chimp-like former president did and said. The difference between the Bush and Obama cases is, that clown-like cheering section notwithstanding last night, even Obama’s own stalwarts are rejecting half of what he does and says, and feel he has betrayed them and let them down.

And that is because he never had an actual mandate for any of this hard-left crap he's pushing on us. He lied. If he had told the truth, perhaps the public would have elected him and then he would have that man--

Oh, of course they wouldn't have elected him. He and the media assured us that he was just a common-sense centrist that wanted to tilt the field slightly away from monied interests and towards the middle class. If he had told the truth about his agenda, even bitter old John McCain could have beaten him.

Say what you want about Bush, but he told us what he'd do as president, and then he did it. He said he was going to cut taxes in such-and-such a way and after wrangling with Congress for a while, he cut taxes in almost the precise way he'd planned. He said he'd give seniors a prescription drug benefit, and he did (not that I think that was a good idea -- but he said he would, and he did). He said he'd fight for a private portion of Social Security, and he did fight for that. He said he'd appoint judicial conservatives to the courts, and he did.

Obama, on the other hand, lied up and down about his true intentions and now here we are with three years left (and it will only be three years) on his corruptly-gained presidency and he's broken every promise he ever made, except the secret ones he made to the hard left, and even there, he's breaking most of them. (But fighting for them before breaking them.)

And it's all because we (well not "we," but America) were sold a bill of goods on this thin-skinned malignant narcissist of the hard left.

Reactions... gathered at ABCNews.

I found this one telling:

“It was the politics of Washington, rather than any specific policy, that the president spoke about with the most passion after a year when the change he pledged proved elusive,” Scott Wilson writes for The Washington Post. “Laced throughout the policy prescriptions, though, was Obama's sharp critique of Washington's political culture and Wall Street's irresponsibility that worked so well for him as a candidate.”

Of course he spoke the most passionately about "the politics of Washington," by which he means criticism of himself, his policies, his competency, and general opposition to His Majesty's Royal Awesomeness.

What he means, of course, is that he wants to change "the politics of Washington" into the cult of personality he still enjoys with his dwindling number of zealots and religious nuts.

He doesn't want disagreement. He especially doesn't want criticism. He just wants to be endlessly told how incredibly awesome he is, as he was told his entire charmed life, and as the press used to on a daily basis.

He doesn't want his failed policies to be the issue. He wants his finely-chiseled pecs (actually kinda-flabby moobs) to be the issue again.

I have real worries about this supposedly "First-Class Temperament." A temperament is only first class if it has been tested, repeatedly, and has held up well under such heat.

His never has been. And we see that "first class temperament" in action-- wars against FoxNews and (for the love of everything holy!) Scott Rasmussen. Claims that, are you kidding me?, the press -- the whole liberal press -- is against him. Endless blame-shifting and refusal to take responsibility. Plaintive and cloying whines of poor-me.

Lying about Supreme Court opinions to the Justices' faces.

And on and on.

And we have another three years of this "First-Class Temperament" continuing to come apart under the stress of actual challenge and testing.

Chuck DeVore's Response: He goes a little bit literary.

The President’s first State of the Union Address was an appropriate reflection of his first year in office: rhetorically ambitious, pragmatically muddled, ideologically dangerous, and surprisingly naïve for a product of the Chicago political machine. But as with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Amory Blaine, for whom “It was always the becoming he dreamed of, never the being,” so too did Barack Obama focus more upon ascending to high office than on using it well. The President is now stuck upon his pinnacle. To borrow a metaphor from the Owens Valley where I spent my high school years, he’s a turtle on a post: you aren’t sure how he got there, and he’s not sure what he’ll do about it.

Before listing the many negatives of the President’s speech, allow me to visit the one positive, when the President said of energy, "That means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development..." As someone who has authored five bills on modern nuclear power in the past four years as well as a major piece of offshore oil legislation (the latter actually passed the State Senate) while working on a comprehensive offshore oil and gas bill that I’ll soon introduce, I was delighted to hear these words from the President. His recent record on these matters, however, brings doubt that word will translate into deed.

As for the rest of the speech? The President’s confusion, leavened with indignation at the forces that confound him, was on full display as the evening ground on.

Click the link for the specifics. From Gabe's Twitter feed; he dubs it "must-read."

posted by Ace at 12:34 PM

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