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发帖数: 29846 | 1 By Jeffrey Folks
When I was teaching at Indiana University in the early 1970s, one of the
undergraduates at the university was Mark Spitz, an NCAA champion swimmer
who went on to win seven gold medals at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Spitz was
a legendary athlete known for his endless hours of training and practice in
the service of a clear goal.
With his remarkable work ethic, Mark Spitz would make an excellent role
model for anyone, but especially for the present occupant of the White House
. Spitz's success as an athlete did not come easily, nor it did not come
about overnight. It was the result of tens of thousands of hours of
strenuous training guided by a long-term plan.
By contrast, President Obama does not seem to have a credible plan, and even
if he did, he seems incapable of working patiently toward a goal. Half the
time, it seems, the President is on the golf course, shooting hoops with
his buddies on the White House court, or vacationing on Martha's Vineyard
with billionaires. When he is not horsing around, Obama is out campaigning.
That doesn't leave much time for shepherding the country through one of
the worst economic periods in history.
Even when he is not golfing or making speeches, the president does not seem
to be making much of an effort. Unlike Mark Spitz, Obama is neither
persistent nor energetic. Every athlete knows that in times of adversity,
one must work through the pain. But when Obama runs up against adversity,
he simply changes course.
From the beginning, the administration's goals have been unclear. Or, more
precisely, the administration has no goal other than power. In fact, I do
not believe that this president has any principles other than a childish and
naïve faith in socialism. More important than any ideological
commitment -- and the key to understanding this president -- is Obama's
arrogant self-regard. What distinguishes Obama from all recent presidents,
even Bill Clinton, is his haughty egotism. This is a president who is
driven by narcissistic conceit unhinged from all reality.
That conceit is expressed in Obama's relations with Congress and with the
public at large. Obama is not one who feels he must work with Congress, and
certainly not with the opposition. He believes that he has the right to
govern by dictate. It is revealing that Congress has paid so little
attention to Obama's annual budgets: his FY2012 budget was DOA. And,
remarkably, when Congress brushed aside his latest jobs plan, Obama made no
effort to obtain its passage. It's as if he is simply going through the
motions of governing rather than making a sustained effort.
Perhaps that's because the president is more concerned about re-election
than about the well-being of the country. In the midst of a lingering
economic crisis, this president has shown very little empathy for the 30
million Americans who are unemployed, underemployed, or out of the job
market altogether. As millions of Americans struggle to survive, Obama does
nothing on the jobs front. What he has done is deliver grandiose, self-
admiring speeches designed to provide political cover for his re-election
effort. This is not the sign of a determined, self-sacrificing leader; it
is the sign of a seriously deluded narcissist who thinks he can talk his way
out of any difficulty.
It's no wonder that Obama's economic plan is not working -- there was never
a plan to begin with. Nor has there been persistence. From week to week,
the White House announces a new program on the economy, usually accompanied
by a "major television address" that no one any longer takes the time to
watch. So it was with the "small business initiative" of 2010 (the "Small
Business Jobs Act"), a purported effort to jump-start job-creation by small
businesses that went nowhere. Even the president seemed to have forgotten
about it within a week. So it has been with the American Jobs Act, the
president's $441-billion jobs bill that could not muster a single Democratic
sponsor in the Senate.
This vacillation is what one would expect from an administration whose
policies are driven by the self-regard of a deluded egotist. The fact is
that none of Obama's efforts -- not green jobs, not ObamaCare, not stimulus
one or stimulus two, not the American Jobs Act, or anything else the
president has come up with -- has benefited the nation as a whole. This is
because not a single one of these efforts was ever intended to benefit the
country -- they were crafted to reward selected constituencies, whether
these be billionaire investors in green energy or public-service employee
unions. There was never any intention of making life better for all
Americans -- only for the small coterie of special interests critical to the
re-election effort.
But even if Obama's major initiatives had been designed to benefit the
country as a whole, they would not have succeeded. They would fail because
the president lacks the political courage to defend them when they prove
unpopular. They would fail because he lacks principles and resolve.
This president has never demonstrated a willingness to work patiently toward
a goal. One day he speaks of putting Social Security and Medicare on a "
sound financial footing." The next day, after he calculates the political
cost, he excludes all talk of entitlement reform from budget negotiations.
When it was expedient to do so, the president declared his intention to shut
down the Guantanamo prison within weeks of taking office. When it became
politically difficult to do so, he conveniently forgot his promise.
It may be fortunate, of course, that Obama does lack courage and persistence
. If he had done a better job of promoting green energy, the country would
be even worse off. As it is, Obama is intent on leading the country in the
wrong direction -- he is just not entirely adept at doing so. With only
half an effort, he has done great damage to the economy and to the social
fabric of the nation. Had he been a more able leader, he would have done a
lot more harm.
What if Obama had worked day and night, with the determination and resolve
of a Mark Spitz? He might have succeeded in the "radical transformation" of
America that he has often cited as his goal. This transformation is
nothing less than the creation of a socialist state with centralized control
and regulation of the entire economy.
So far, Obama has succeeded only in a partial transformation. We can be
thankful that he has not been as effective as he might have been, but we
should be fearful of what will happen if he gets four more years. Even a
vacillating and weak-willed leader can do a lot of damage, given enough time.
Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books on American culture, most recently
Heartland of the Imagination (2011).
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/11/no_gold_medals_for_obama.html#ixzz1f7tXCQHp |
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