Who can forget Veruca Salt, the selfish little brat who demanded her way in Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. If you’re unfamiliar, watch this:
In my latest American Issues Project column I argue that Barack Obama is the Veruca Salt president. He wants the world and don’t you dare deny him. As Veruca sings in the video above, “I don’t care how, I want it now!”
No one can forget Veruca Salt, the rude, selfish, and obnoxious child of a rich nut magnate in the 1971 film “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” Self-centered and uncompromising, Veruca insisted that she always get her way and demanded that her desires take precedence over everyone else’s. As she and the other children toured Wonka’s chocolate factory, they entered the room where geese laid golden eggs. Immediately she was enamored with the geese and ordered her father to buy one for her. When Wonka denied her father’s checkbook, Veruca became enraged and destroyed everything could get her hands on as she sang the famous lyrics that embodied her character: “I want the world. I want the whole world. I want to lock it all up in my pocket. It’s my bar of chocolate. Give it to me now.”
In spite of Veruca’s obnoxious behavior, she is a silly amateur compared to President Barack Obama and would be struck dumb with envy at all that he has accumulated in such a short time. Obama has only been in office for less than five months, yet he has managed to snatch up vast amounts of power and place huge swaths of the American economy under his control so he can fulfil his whims and desires. There isn’t a Willie Wonka to say no this time. With a dutiful Democratic Congress, the president has control over the checkbook and with it he is seizing more and more control of the goose that lays the golden eggs, the American economy.
Shortly after winning the election, President Obama insisted we needed a colossal stimulus bill and launched a full-court press to get his way. It’s been almost four months since Obama signed the stimulus bill into law, but it hasn’t done anything to stop our economy’s downward slide even though we were told there were countless numbers of shovel ready projects ready and waiting. But that’s not all. Vice President Biden has acknowledged that some of the money will end up being wasted and that some people are being “scammed” already. Is this administration concerned about the waste and corruption of stimulus funds? Seemingly not. President Obama got what he wanted. The results appear to be inconsequential to him.
As I write in my piece, it’s Obama’s world. We just live in it. Welcome to America’s Veruca Salt presidency.
