She Can't Fight Your Battles for You Your Whole Life, Sir

She Can't Fight Your Battles for You Your Whole Life, Sir

MBA

Why is it that every time our president notices one of his expensive new — and free enterprise-killing — programs is in danger of crashing down upon his notoriously sensitive head he makes a mad dash towards the memory of his recently-deceased grandmother?

Let’s stop for a minute to take a look at how many times Barack Obama has used Madelyn Dunham — who probably would bless such a use were she able — to try to shift attention away from a controversy he’s helped to create or a favored government program he hopes to impose upon us, the taxpayers.

I first noticed use of this technique during the campaign, when Mr. Obama whipped out a then-terminally-ill-with-cancer Madelyn Dunham to use as a shield when his pastor of 20 years, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, was caught on video saying some frankly vile and racist things, not only about his country but also about the people who inhabited it.

Then-Senator Obama attempted to evoke feelings of guilt in those who opposed his electoral bid by subtly reminding his opponents during his much-adored (by the Left, at least) Philadelphia speech where, standing in front of an appropriately patriotic backdrop of no fewer than 7 American flags, he basically accused Ms. Dunham of racism herself.

It was a magnificent ploy, and it essentially diminished the strength of the fallout surrounding Reverend Wright’s ugly sermons to a congregation that no reasonable person would dispute had to have counted Barack Obama as a frequent attendee.  For if even his own grandmother could harbor such subconscious racist feelings, how could the rest of us peasants hope to be pure and free of the stain?  Too bad John McCain never felt compelled to rebut Mr. Obama’s cynical ploy.

At any rate, Mr. Obama soon threw Reverend Wright under his campaign bus — which ended up hosting a score or more of former friends and associates like Tony Rezko and Catholic priest Michael Pfleger — as soon as Wright proved to be too hard an entity to keep on a short leash.  His grandmother, fortunately for her, managed to avoid such a desultory fate as that which befell the very rich and soon-to-be-retired-to-his-own-mansion former Obama spiritual advisor.

 There have been several other instances in the intervening months since Barack Obama’s inauguration where the memory of Madelyn Dunham (who, sadly, passed away shortly before election day in November, 2008) has been wielded as either a truncheon to beat down the opposition or as a guilt-inducing spectre to keep folks suitably guilty about not passing some such legislation or another.

 Lately, Ms. Dunham’s been playing one of the central characters in the Obama health care, uh, I mean…health insurance “reform” tableau.  Just the other day, at a Grand Junction, Colorado, staged-event-cum-”town hall,” Mr. Obama went on about ‘Toot’ (as he calls her) and her own medical issues in an attempt to prove his bona fides when it comes to knowing the right things to do (in this case, impose a de facto if not de jure eventual single payer system) as it pertains to health care. 

I mean, I love the passion he can bring to his campaign-style rhetoric on this front, but is he really convincing anybody anymore about anything?  Perhaps we’re all starting to tire of the 24/7 campaign mode he never seems to have exited when he took the oath of office last January 20th.

 But passion and rhetoric – in the hands of a Barack Obama – are nothing more than the tools of a class-warfare populist rhetorician and not of a serious legislator and leader of the most powerful nation in the world.  Whipping out, and then hiding behind, the memory of his white grandmother has begun to lose its effectiveness and looks to me to be appealing strictly to his far-left base and the slavish mainstream media personalities who can’t help themselves from experiencing a tingle or two down their legs on occasion. 

 Polls are bearing the above conclusion out, by the way.  And it looks like Mr. Obama senses this.  He’s desperately trying to regain the initiative and go on the attack, but regrouping and counterattacking are essentially concepts of the military, and our president, who has no experience of the tactical or strategic maneuvers that might aid in the regroup and then counterattack as applied to neutralizing and then eliminating his opponents — he never served in the military nor actually did much in the way of real legislating during his very brief tenures as a public servant at any level in government — is more like a stumbling new recruit in boot camp than a seasoned professional warrior. 

Unfortunately, the presidency, as was famously observed by none other than Joe Biden during the Democratic primary campaign last year, is NOT a community education extension course, and we don’t have the time necessary to let him try and then fail until he begins to get things reasonably correct.