Obama needs to get tough with foes
President Barack Obama is brilliant, articulate, funny, unflappable, invariably pleasant, able to get his points across without screaming. It’s not working for him.
The International Olympic Committee snubs him when he tries to get the Games for Chicago. The Chinese tell him to go get stuffed on climate change. Individual senators rewrite his health-care bill with impunity. His erstwhile liberal colleagues all but accuse him of double-crossing them on the wars.
The problem, as commentators are increasingly saying, is that while even his opponents like him, no one fears him.
That was most evident in the Republican reaction to Obama’s reaction to the attempted Christmas Day bombing of an Amsterdam-to-Detroit Northwest flight.
Rep. Pete King, R-N.Y., said the fact that it took Obama, who was in Hawaii on vacation, 72 hours to address the incident on camera showed that fighting terrorism was low on his list of priorities. The Democrats – but not Obama or anyone close to him – pointed out that then-President George W. Bush, also on vacation, took six days to comment on the Shoe Bomber.
Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., accused Obama of failing to defend the country even as Hoekstra used the incident to raise campaign funds.
Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., said the president “appeased” terrorists, even though the senator’s holding up of a permanent head of the U.S. Transportation Security Administration is hardly throwing obstacles in the terrorists’ way.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who is still waiting for the Iraqis to welcome us as liberators, accuses the president of being so preoccupied with “social transformation” that he has failed to notice the terrorists are coming after us.
King regularly bashes Obama for trying to close the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison. He says bringing the prisoners to the mainland will put us in danger. Here’s an idea: Bring the 200 or so remaining detainees to Massapequa Park on the south shore of Long Island, King’s district, open the door of the buses and let all the prisoners go. Maybe they’re dangerous, maybe they’re not. Maybe they all find work as landscapers. We’ll find out. In any case, they’re King’s problem now.
Hoekstra is from Michigan; in fact, he’s running for governor, which is why he was raising funds. Michigan should tell Obama something. After all, he’s effectively the head of two of the Big Three domestic automakers. Unless Hoekstra shapes up, Obama should announce that, on reflection, the Republicans are right: The government bailout of the auto industry is socialism. Therefore, he’s decided to let the free market take its course and let GM and Chrysler go under.
Obama owes Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada big time for health-care reform; therefore, opening the nuclear-waste depository at Yucca Mountain is probably out. But we’ve got to find someplace to store all that glow-in-the-dark garbage. It happens that South Carolina, DeMint’s state, is home to a huge nuclear facility at Savannah River. Obama can reassure the senator that this is a tough security measure because there’s nothing like dangerously high levels of radioactivity to keep the terrorists away.
That leaves Cheney, who emerges from hiding more and more frequently for the express purpose of denouncing Obama. The former vice president may be the most secretive individual in American public life. Obama has just issued an executive order, intended to increase public access to secret material, stating that, “no information may be classified indefinitely.” This is not at all what Cheney thinks. Obama should announce that as part of that order he’s throwing open all the files, papers and memos from Cheney’s eight years as vice president.
It may not shut up Obama’s critics, but no one will accuse him of being too nice a guy.
(Contact Dale McFeatters at McFeattersD@SHNS.com.)
Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.shns.com)