Barack Obama celebrated the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth by comparing himself to the 16th President. Lincoln was a tall, thin lawyer from Illinois, born in Kentucky, who became a politician. Obama is a tall thin lawyer from Illinois, born in Hawaii, who became a politician. Both men most notably later became President.
While paralleling himself with Lincoln seems to be more of an ego trip than anything else, it is true that both men became President at a time of deep division within the United States. Lincoln presided over the secession of the states south of the Mason-Dixon Line; Obama is presiding over a country in which a deep division exists between the rich and the poor. This split may only be a perceived divide rather than an actual physical chasm between the two groups, but so far Obama hasn't done anything to bring the two groups back together.
During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln gave one of his best known speeches in which he stated that a house divided against itself cannot stand. President Obama, during his campaign, alluded to a divide between white-collar and blue-collar Americans. He then painted himself as someone who was more in tune with what it is that blue-collar Americans need in order to get back on their feet and get ahead. He then described John McCain as a white collar sort who was out of touch with anything beneath the upper crust of America.
McCain's campaign countered by bringing Sarah Palin into the fold; Gov. Palin brought to the table a plain-spoken working mom with experience in small-town politics dealing with hard working blue-collar Alaskans who later made her way up to the top job as Governor of Alaska, breaking a glass ceiling along the way.
Barack Obama faced a glass ceiling of his own, as never before in our history had a black man been elected President. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have run as Democrats, and J. C. Watts ran as a Republican, but Obama passed all of them when he became the first black man to be elected to the highest office in American politics.
The Obama administration wasted almost no time pushing through Congress an economic stimulus package loaded with wasteful spending that authorized the release of nearly a trillion dollars back into the economy. This figure trumps the whole amount of money spent by the United States government in a single spending package in almost 243 years of existence. Our government doesn't have a trillion dollars to give out, so this money was borrowed from China and must eventually be paid back with interest.
Obama's confession that he is in touch with the working man led to his administration's decision to revamp the U.S. tax code. The tax cuts for virtually all Americans placed by the Bush administration were allowed to expire, which means that everybody's taxes went up, exempting, of course, the lower 40 percent of the population who, for any one of several reasons, don't pay income taxes. His administration then announced that 95 percent of everybody will be getting a refund. This includes the 40 percent that didn't pay any income taxes to begin with.
There's never been any doubt that our national debt will never be paid off, so adding a trillion dollars to it doesn't seem all that bad. The truth of the matter is the national debt is peanuts when compared to the threat that terrorist activity poses to our national safety. President Obama continues to talk about removing our peacekeepers from Iraq and shifting them to Afghanistan. Iran's tough talk about nuclear weapons merits attention, but this does not mean we should pull our forces from Iraq and risk mitigating all the gains made there.
Undeniably, Obama faces a trifecta of difficult tasks in his time as President - maintaining America's safety from terrorism, restoring our economy, and continuing America's role as a leader and a force to be reckoned with. The choices are his to make from here on out, and the results of these choices will reflect on his legacy as President. So far, he has embarked on a world tour asking leaders of various countries to forgive misdeeds done by America. He’s also met with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and expressed an interest in talking with Raul Castro’s government in Cuba in hopes of improving relations with these countries. If some of the decisions he is making did not have such scary implications, this whole thing would be funnier than an episode of Saturday Night Live back when SNL was funny.
4 comments