If Republicans, conservatives and Christians would have been successfully fighting the information war, more Americans would know about and understand the facts presented in this list by former congressional and White House aide Dean F. Clancy:
Every president is finally remembered by a single sentence. George Washington was the father of our country and the first president. Abraham Lincoln saved the Union and freed the slaves. Ronald Reagan revived the economy and defeated the Soviet Union. Bill Clinton reformed welfare and balanced the budget.
What about Barack Obama? How will he be remembered? He was our first black president and killed bin Laden? He screwed up our health care? Not quite Mount Rushmore material, I’d say.
Still, it would be unfair to call President Obama an underachiever. He boasts a rather impressive legacy, in the negative column. How many presidents, after all, have managed to increase federal spending by one-fifth and the national debt by two-thirds? What president can compete with him on having expanded presidential power via executive action, often without legal authority? Next to him, Nixon and LBJ look like schoolgirls. And who even comes close to his electoral record? Under Mr. Obama, Democrats have lost 69 House seats, 13 Senate seats, both houses of Congress, 12 governorships, 30 state legislative chambers, and more than 900 state legislative seats. Let no one say this man was inconsequential.
Is it premature to define his legacy? Not really. Although he has nearly fourteen months to go, he is already the lamest of ducks. Just listen to his would-be Democratic successors: one strains to detect any proud talk of “the Obama Record” or spirited cries of “Win one more for Barack.” Our 44th president is a political albatross and increasingly reminds one of the hapless Jimmy Carter in his final, miserable days. Indeed, the parallels with 1980 are eerie: Russia on the march, Iranian mullahs chanting “Death to America,” the economy stuck in the doldrums — and so on. At this late date it’s hard to see how Mr. Obama could alter the judgment that his has been a failed presidency.
And what exactly is his legacy? A collection of ticking time bombs, left behind to be defused or cleaned up after by his unfortunate successors. The list is seemingly endless, but ten strike me as particularly urgent and worrisome.
1. Another Iraq war. With the Friday the 13th Paris Attacks, it’s clear we are once again at war in the Middle East. And while some of the blame must go to George W. Bush for needlessly toppling Saddam Hussein in 2003, a good share of the blame must accrue to Mr. Obama, for having mismanaged the withdrawal so badly that a kind of Neo-Mordor has been able to erupt from out of nowhere to seize vast stretches of the Arabian peninsula. Mr. Obama’s half-hearted aerial bombardment campaign against ISIS, which seems designed to run out the clock on a problem deemed insoluble, has acted as an invitation to the Orc armies of radical Islam to bring the battle to us — and has enticed Russia into filling the regional power vacuum. Public support for American boots on the ground is soft; but that could change with a single, Paris-style massacre on American soil. A Third Iraq War is no longer out of the question, and would be an ironic legacy for the 2009 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Prognosis: war.
Here is the rest of the list without the supportering paragraphs:
2. A nuclear Iran.
3. A flat-lined “recovery.”
4. Higher deficits.
5. Higher energy costs.
6. Health care despair.
7. A “food stamp” nation.
8. Insolvent entitlements.
9. A needless crime wave.
10. Conscience wars.
Read more: American Thinker
Image credit: Cartoon by A.F. Branco.
