{"id":654,"date":"2010-04-26T21:20:10","date_gmt":"2010-04-27T03:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/?p=654"},"modified":"2010-04-26T21:20:10","modified_gmt":"2010-04-27T03:20:10","slug":"the-post-decency-pretender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/?p=654","title":{"rendered":"The Post-Decency Pretender"},"content":{"rendered":"

In an October 27, 2009 article for the Wall Street Journal<\/em>, editorial writer William McGurn refers to Barack Obama as \u201cThe Post-Gracious President.\u201d\u00a0 In support of that characterization McGurn cites the unprecedented and never-ending digs at George W. Bush that are the stock-in-trade of almost everyone in the Obama regime and the Democrat Congress.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If the economic news is bad, it\u2019s Bush\u2019s fault.\u00a0 If Massachusetts is inundated by flood waters or if Florida is flattened by a hurricane, it\u2019s Bush\u2019s fault.\u00a0 If Obama finds it convenient to turn his back on the Israelis in order to appease his soul-mate, Ahmadinejad, it\u2019s because Bush filled the Israelis\u2019 heads with too much false hope.\u00a0 And if Michelle complains of being a bit \u201cirregular,\u201d it\u2019s probably because she can\u2019t cope with the thought that George W. Bush once used the same \u201cfacilities\u201d she is now forced to use.\u00a0 It\u2019s all Bush\u2019s fault.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bush, of course, refuses to respond, relying on Dick Cheney to be the sole defender of his presidency.\u00a0 Whether it\u2019s because he is genetically incapable of defending himself\u2026 he being his father\u2019s son\u2026 or if it is because he adheres to the old adage about the consequences of \u201clying down with dogs,\u201d we can\u2019t really say.\u00a0 All we know is that Bush appears blithely unconcerned that, in the minds of Obama and his Chicago henchmen, he is not a respected former president; he is merely the \u201cpi\u00f1ata of the year.\u201d\u00a0 Never mind that his refusal to defend himself makes it all but impossible for the rest of us to defend him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

McGurn points to a constant theme, a line Obama has repeated so often that he no longer has to read it from his teleprompter.\u00a0 Obama is fond of saying, \u201cI don\u2019t mind cleaning up the mess that some other folks made; that\u2019s what I signed up to do.\u00a0 But while I\u2019m there mopping the floor, I don\u2019t want somebody standing there saying, \u2018You\u2019re not mopping fast enough.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

Clearly, Obama is not the brightest bulb on the porch\u2026 witness the few occasions when he has been called upon to speak extemporaneously.\u00a0 If someone with a lot of money and clout hadn\u2019t bought his way into Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard, he\u2019d still be struggling to maintain a 2.0 GPA at some community college in Hawaii.\u00a0 The point is, with a minimal amount of brain power he should be able to figure out that the last thing conservatives and Republicans want is for him to mop faster<\/em>.\u00a0 He can\u2019t seem to grasp that what we want is for him to simply stop mopping.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

Nevertheless, we should thank him for providing us with the mental picture of him armed with a mop and a bucket.\u00a0 Perhaps if we handed him a shovel and had him climb into the bottom of a hole, that might also be a \u201cteachable moment\u201d for him.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

McGurn reminds us of Obama\u2019s inaugural address.\u00a0 After tossing an obligatory flower or two at George Bush and John McCain, Obama switched from bouquets to mud in a New York second.\u00a0 He announced that he had been elected because Americans had \u201cchosen hope over fear.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was as if George W. Bush had announced in his first inaugural address, with Bill Clinton standing nearby, that henceforth the Oval Office would be used only for conducting the people\u2019s business\u2026 his personal affairs (wink, wink) would be restricted to the family living quarters.\u00a0 Of course, Republicans have far too much class for that sort of \u201ccheap shot.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

On his first overseas junket, the first time he was able to get his hands on the keys to Air Force One, he demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of American exceptionalism, telling a French audience that there have been times when \u201cAmerica has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.\u201d\u00a0 The fact is, from World War I through the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, America has been nothing if not selfless.\u00a0 Those wars, individually and collectively, were the most unselfish acts ever performed by one nation on behalf of another.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Obama, a man who lacked the courage to wear the uniform of his country\u2019s fighting forces, would have no way of knowing that. \u00a0It is the beneficiaries of American selflessness\u2026 his\u00a0 leftist admirers in Germany, France, Great Britain, and other countries\u2026 who have been \u201cdismissive, even derisive,\u201d of American exceptionalism.\u00a0<\/p>\n

McGurn notes that in May of 2009, when Obama first signaled that he would go back on his pledge to close Guantanamo Bay, he explained that, \u201cWe\u2019re cleaning up something that is, quite simply, a mess\u2026 The problem of what to do with Guantanamo detainees was not caused by my decision to close the facility, the problem exists because of the decision to open Guantanamo in the first place.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is typical Obama-think.\u00a0 It\u2019s as if Adolph Hitler had complained that the Holocaust would never have happened if only all those Jews hadn\u2019t insisted on living in Europe.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Like nearly all liberals, Obama appears unable to comprehend that Guantanamo Bay is the ideal place in which to hold and interrogate the world\u2019s most dangerous terrorists.\u00a0 He and his attorney general, Eric Holder, would rather relocate them to a small town in northern Illinois where local residents will have cause to fear, every day, that al Qaeda will take out their wrath on the local community.\u00a0 The Obama decision to move the world\u2019s most dangerous terrorists from an island in the Caribbean, from which there is no escape, to a maximum security prison at Thompson, Illinois\u2026 a community of 708 residents\u2026 is an open invitation to disaster.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yes, the Clintons were evil, but they were motivated by nothing more than sheer avarice.\u00a0 Obama is far worse.\u00a0 He appears motivated by nothing more than a deep-seated hatred for the country he purports to lead.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In recent days Obama has humiliated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, berating him in a White House meeting for allowing the construction of additional housing units in a Jewish section of East Jerusalem.\u00a0 Obama then reportedly left the room abruptly, leaving Netanyahu with the words, \u201cLet me know what you decide.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then, on the day that Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife, and 94 senior officials of the Polish government were laid to rest in Warsaw, Obama stayed home in Washington because of an erupting volcano in Iceland.\u00a0 However, instead of paying his respects at the Polish embassy, something that any decent American leader would have done, Obama raised a foursome and played a round of golf.\u00a0 It was crass insensitivity.<\/p>\n

On April 15, Obama spoke at a $30,000 per couple Democratic fundraiser at the home of Gloria and Emilio Estefan in Miami.\u00a0 In his prepared remarks, he ridiculed the Tea Party movement, saying he was \u201camused\u201d by their rallies.\u00a0 Then, in the most preposterous statement of all, he went on to say, \u201cYou would think they would want to thank me.\u201d<\/p>\n

What sort of man would publicly ask to be thanked for taking his own countrymen down the road to ruin?\u00a0 Is it that sort of narcissism that caused McGurn to refer to Obama as a \u201cpost-gracious\u201d president?\u00a0 The truth is, the American people will give Obama the \u201cthanks\u201d he deserves in November when Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid lose their jobs.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

On January 20, 1989, the day that George H.W. Bush was inaugurated, I attended a special inaugural ball honoring all of the living recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor.\u00a0 As I stood in the middle of the Grand Ballroom at the Capitol Hilton that evening, I found myself surrounded by no fewer than fifty-three men, all wearing that beautiful light blue ribbon draped around their collars\u2026 the precious medal itself, the five-pointed star, dangling just below their black bow ties.\u00a0 When I tried to imagine the incredible acts of courage that those men had performed on the field of battle I was filled with awe just to be in the same room with them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On that day in January 1989, none of us had even heard of Barack Hussein Obama.\u00a0 He had just wrapped up a brief career as a \u201ccommunity organizer\u201d in South Chicago and had moved on to attend Harvard Law School on someone else\u2019s dollar.\u00a0 But to think that men such as those who wear the Congressional Medal of Honor would ever be required to take orders from the likes of Barack Obama is simply unthinkable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In fact, I cringe each and every time I see Obama striding purposefully across the south lawn of the White House, headed for Marine One.\u00a0 I cringe because I know that some young Marine will be standing tall at the door of the chopper, and that that young Marine will be required to salute a man who is a pretender, ineligible to serve in the office he occupies, but who has not earned the right to be saluted by any American military man or woman.<\/p>\n

Conservative blogger, Alan Caruba, describes him best.\u00a0 In a January 2010 article titled \u201cObama\u2019s Make-Believe Life,\u201d Caruba says, \u201cBarack Obama exists only as the sock puppet of his handlers, of the people who have maneuvered and manufactured this pathetic individual\u2019s life\u2026 We laugh at the ventriloquist\u2019s dummy, but what do you do when the dummy is President of the United States of America? \u201d<\/p>\n

Yes, Obama may have been a \u201cpost-gracious\u201d president in October 2009 when William McGurn attached that label to him, but he has built on his record and his reputation since then.\u00a0 I prefer to call him the \u201cpost-decency pretender.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an October 27, 2009 article for the Wall Street Journal, editorial writer William McGurn refers to Barack Obama as \u201cThe Post-Gracious President.\u201d\u00a0 In support of that characterization McGurn cites the unprecedented and never-ending digs at George W. Bush that … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=654"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":655,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions\/655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}