Obama's First Year Ends

By Alan Caruba

After the assassination of John F. Kennedy one of the books about his brief administration was “A Thousand Days” by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Even so, he had set America on a trip to the Moon, helped advance the Civil Rights movement, and, with Jackie Kennedy, brought a brief era of grace and sophistication to the White House.

January 20 will mark a year since Barack Obama took the oath of office. As this is written, the entire nation awaits the outcome of the special election in Massachusetts and many want to see an end to the Democrat control of the Senate. There are any number of ironies, not the least of which that it was Massachusetts that gave us JFK and his bloated little brother, Teddy.

It is hard to recall a more brutally partisan administration and Congress. Bribery and thuggish uncivil behavior has become the hallmark of the Democrat controlled political process; weakness and appeasement the nation’s foreign policy.

“Yes, we can” has transitioned into a public panic regarding the massive expenditures, the billions spent to take over the auto industry, banks, insurance companies, and an insulting “stimulus” bill devoted more to “green jobs” than real jobs. The final injury as the first year comes to a close would be the passage in the Senate of a widely hated Medicare “reform” that reeked of unconstitutional elements and which will surely be challenged in the courts.

It is astounding that a single Senate vote could end the reign of terror that characterizes Obama’s first year.

The answer Barack Obama gave over and over again was that it was all the fault of George W. Bush. By summer, that excuse had lost its power to influence all but Obama’s most stupid supporters.

Obama’s “first thousand days” will prove critical to the future of the nation. Profligate debt and possible default haunts most of the States and the nation as a whole. Moody’s Investor Services has warned that the nation is barely three years or less away from losing its prized triple-A rating for its securities. China has warned that America cannot assume it will continue to purchase its debt.

On Christmas Day, al Qaeda reminded Americans that all are considered targets in its terror war on the nation and the West. If they wanted to scare us, they succeeded. Perhaps they were encouraged by a President who took three months to make up his mind whether to continue to wage war on them in Afghanistan and three days before he made a public response to the Christmas attack.

After the Fort Hood assault, it was former President Bush who quietly visited the wounded, not President Obama, though he did stage an earlier photo opportunity of his greeting the returning war dead from Afghanistan.

There is no question that, in the first year- of Obama’s first—and likely his last-—term in office, Iran will achieve its goal of becoming a nuclear power with the ability to put warheads on top of missiles capable of hitting anywhere in the Middle East and as far away as Europe. Diplomacy has failed. Only one option remains.

At this writing, very nearly half of the voters express disapproval for Obama’s conduct of the nation’s affairs and they will focus on November’s midterm elections in an effort to politically neuter his administration with a transfer of congressional power to the Republican Party.

If the off-year election of Republican Governors in New Jersey and Virginia was an indicator, the steady stream of announcements by Democrat legislators that they intend to retire or change party affiliation suggests that the writing is clearly on the wall.

The leading indicator, however, remains the unemployment rate, officially at ten percent, but widely considered to be closer to fifteen percent and higher.

The President’s State of the Union speech on January 27 will be parsed and examined like a doctoral dissertation on economics, a subject Obama seems to understand only in terms of Marxist orthodoxy.

Worse for him will be the increasingly widespread view that he lies virtually all the time. He lacks credibility with everyone except the slavish drones of the mainstream media and brain-dead supporters.

Well before the end of his first thousand days, Obama has joined former President Carter among the pantheon of Presidents forever known for their failures.