Thursday, March 24, 2011
Present, Still
Barack Obama has served as a Community Organizer, State Senator, US Senator and president. His roll call votes indicate that he voted "present" more often than anything else.
Voting present is not a sign of leadership. It is punting. It forces other people to take up the slack for your indecisiveness. My ex-wife used to get mad at me whenever she asked me what I wanted to eat or to do and I would say, whatever you want. She wanted me to make a decision and I deferred back to her. I voted present. It actually did help my marriage last a bit longer but that is not the way to truly get anything done.
I have never aspired to a leadership capacity partly because it has been my nature to not make a decision until I really, really had to make it. For a year or two I was in a management role in my office but it only led to increased alcohol input to alleviate the strain on my psyche for having to make decisions that I felt uncomfortable making. I demoted myself from that role and was able to kick the drinking dependency.
But I am a lowly peon in our society. I am not the leader of the free world, nor would I ever want to be so. Mr. Obama, however, did everything he could do to get that position. He talked a good talk on the campaign trail and he ran his campaign smartly to overtake the predicted front runner in his party, Hillary Clinton, and on to easily defeat John McCain to win his coveted title and position. He said all the right things, I guess, to get himself elected.
Then he started off with a bang, declaring Guantanamo to be closed within one year and helping push nearly a trillion dollars of Democrats wet dreams into reality. He went on a worldwide public speaking tour criticizing America for her past sins and resetting relations with the world.
Then he started voting present again. And he is still voting present.
Yes, I know, he doesn't vote anymore. Doesn't matter, he's having the same effect. Let someone else start off on a subject and then he will come along and criticize them. He said last year he would test Republicans about slashing government spending but when it came time for him to propose his budget for next year, it was actually larger than ever. No cuts. More spending, nothing about Social Security, Medicare or anything relevant to the discussion.
That is voting present.
Watching him dithering about sending more troops to Afghanistan his first year in office was painful. It took him 3 months to decide to give the generals what they asked for and what he had said on the campaign trail that he would do there. But when he announced the surge, he immediately followed that up by saying the troop draw down would begin in 2011. Some surge.
That is voting present.
His comments about Tunisia and Egypt were from both sides of his mouth as well. On Lybia, I have never seen or heard so much indecisiveness from one administration ever.
What exactly is our mission there? Who's in charge? Why did Bush need 17 UN resolutions and approval from both branches of Congress to go into Iraq while Obama only needs verbal support from organizations we don't even know (who are the rebels in Lybia?) and a vague list of countries with no fire power and the Arab League, who immediately criticized the very no-fly zone enforcement that they had requested.
Ghaddafi must go! No, maybe he can stay. I'm not really sure what we want him to do. This foreign politics stuff is really irritating me. Guess we'll lob a few Tomahawks at them and then consider our mission complete.
That is voting present.
The longer this man is in office the more nervous about our future I become. My greatest fear is that somehow things will turn around for his popularity and complacent, uninformed people will put him back in office for another four years.
I don't think this country can survive another four years of this man in the White House. Voting present.
They say Nero fiddled while Rome burned.
Obama just plays golf and basketball while the world burns.
And he is present, still. Dammit.
OH
Voting present is not a sign of leadership. It is punting. It forces other people to take up the slack for your indecisiveness. My ex-wife used to get mad at me whenever she asked me what I wanted to eat or to do and I would say, whatever you want. She wanted me to make a decision and I deferred back to her. I voted present. It actually did help my marriage last a bit longer but that is not the way to truly get anything done.
I have never aspired to a leadership capacity partly because it has been my nature to not make a decision until I really, really had to make it. For a year or two I was in a management role in my office but it only led to increased alcohol input to alleviate the strain on my psyche for having to make decisions that I felt uncomfortable making. I demoted myself from that role and was able to kick the drinking dependency.
But I am a lowly peon in our society. I am not the leader of the free world, nor would I ever want to be so. Mr. Obama, however, did everything he could do to get that position. He talked a good talk on the campaign trail and he ran his campaign smartly to overtake the predicted front runner in his party, Hillary Clinton, and on to easily defeat John McCain to win his coveted title and position. He said all the right things, I guess, to get himself elected.
Then he started off with a bang, declaring Guantanamo to be closed within one year and helping push nearly a trillion dollars of Democrats wet dreams into reality. He went on a worldwide public speaking tour criticizing America for her past sins and resetting relations with the world.
Then he started voting present again. And he is still voting present.
Yes, I know, he doesn't vote anymore. Doesn't matter, he's having the same effect. Let someone else start off on a subject and then he will come along and criticize them. He said last year he would test Republicans about slashing government spending but when it came time for him to propose his budget for next year, it was actually larger than ever. No cuts. More spending, nothing about Social Security, Medicare or anything relevant to the discussion.
That is voting present.
Watching him dithering about sending more troops to Afghanistan his first year in office was painful. It took him 3 months to decide to give the generals what they asked for and what he had said on the campaign trail that he would do there. But when he announced the surge, he immediately followed that up by saying the troop draw down would begin in 2011. Some surge.
That is voting present.
His comments about Tunisia and Egypt were from both sides of his mouth as well. On Lybia, I have never seen or heard so much indecisiveness from one administration ever.
What exactly is our mission there? Who's in charge? Why did Bush need 17 UN resolutions and approval from both branches of Congress to go into Iraq while Obama only needs verbal support from organizations we don't even know (who are the rebels in Lybia?) and a vague list of countries with no fire power and the Arab League, who immediately criticized the very no-fly zone enforcement that they had requested.
Ghaddafi must go! No, maybe he can stay. I'm not really sure what we want him to do. This foreign politics stuff is really irritating me. Guess we'll lob a few Tomahawks at them and then consider our mission complete.
That is voting present.
The longer this man is in office the more nervous about our future I become. My greatest fear is that somehow things will turn around for his popularity and complacent, uninformed people will put him back in office for another four years.
I don't think this country can survive another four years of this man in the White House. Voting present.
They say Nero fiddled while Rome burned.
Obama just plays golf and basketball while the world burns.
And he is present, still. Dammit.
OH
# posted by OH @ 1:18 PM 
