As the Deepwater Horizon blow out continues unabated for a month and one half, the disaster has become what Rush Limbaugh is calling Obama’s Bay of Rigs. This may be one of those times when a spoof better describes what the public is coming to view as this president’s Waterloo. Oversold and under delivered from the moment he came on the national scene, Barack Obama is now being rolled over by an extraordinary confluence of events.
At the center of these events now is the oil spill in the Gulf, a situation over which he has minimal tactical control and 100% political control. But there’s nothing he can do to fix the problem that BP and a world of petroleum engineers haven’t already thought of. So what does he do next? Send in the prosecutors. Although this may be seen as effective by some (those focused solely on payback), it is no comfort to most who will see it as a cynical political response to a problem that begs for some “roll up your sleeves” leadership.
The problem waiting just one step back from the oil spill was manifested yesterday in the thinly disguised political theatre produced by Hamas and Turkey when a barricade storming flotilla of Hamas thugs and their requisite coterie of human shields upstaged a planned “reconciliation” meeting between Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and President Obama. The attempt by the Obama administration to reset the Israeli dialogue with the US came after President Obama botched the last meeting and humiliated the Israeli Prime Minister in a way that shocked even Congress. Our enemies obviously saw this imminent rapprochement as the time to stage an incident (their timing was perfect and the poorly executed response by the IDF only helped their cause). But the genesis of this entire fiasco can be found in the Apology Tour conducted across the globe by our president last year, where a message of self doubt, weakness and appeasement was delivered to a worldwide audience by a man still consumed by the fumes of his own celebrity. It was, as predicted, viewed by our enemies as a sign of weakness and yesterday’s provocation was the inevitable result.
Election results of the past year show clearly that there is a growing sense of unease percolating in the electorate. Personal income rose over $50 billion in April yet consumer spending was nonexistent. That is the calculus of fear. As has been remarked on this blog before, there is the growing realization that not only is there no one at the helm, there isn’t the least perception that anyone is in charge. The oil spill in the Gulf only enlarges this perception of an impotent President; the barricade run by our enemies yesterday against Israel, however, just shows that our enemies are not going to let a good opportunity pass when they see one.
Note: Link to generic ballot fixed
