Saturday, January 7, 2017

The Blame Game

Eight years ago, when Barack Obama was elected President, Americans waited expectantly to see if he would, or even could, live up to his grandiose claims. Outgoing President Bush said little and made the transition as smooth as possible. 

The economy was in a downturn. Not entirely Bush's fault, but the sitting President owns the economy for better or worse. President Bush accepted his fate and in the traditional gentlemanly manner expected, he said nothing about his successors time in office.

It proved that the force of President Obama's personality was not up to making his promises fact. Due to bad planning, overreach, and politicization, things went sorely awry. Obama took advantage of Bush's polite silence to dump the blame for all that went wrong on him.

For four years every misstep and every foul ball was the fault of George W. Bush. All the saints in heaven could not have done any better claimed our new President. For four long years President Obama took responsibility for nothing.

When the new presidential election came up, folks gave Obama another chance, but wisely took the House and Senate away from him. 

But what the voters did was to give him a new excuse for failure. He could and did blame those damned obstructionist Republicans. So for eight years Obama proved that while he was not so much as a President, he was a master at the blame game.

Time marches on and Americans in fear and disgust at all things liberal gave the Presidency to Donald Trump. Suddenly, even though he has not yet been sworn in, all responsibility becomes his. Four black kids spend two days torturing a handicapped man in inhuman ways, it is Trumps fault according to CNN. 

Just peruse the liberal news sites, our not yet President is the font of all evil. Maybe the Russians hacked into political computer systems. Trumps fault says the left. It gets boring and annoying. But it does prove one thing. The left loves the blame game and they play it well.

Tuesday, January 3, 2017

Do It Yourself

I was always a do-it-yourself kind of guy. Home repairs, car repairs, even building electronics kits, it was fun and a good way to save money. I had a few, like minded, friends in my neighborhood. We all had different skill sets. Together, there wasn't much we weren't ready to try. Good days, back then.

But there are just some things that one cannot do for one's self. As much as President Obama doesn't want to believe this, a President cannot write his own legacy. And a President's legacy cannot be written immediately after he leaves office. 

Legacies are written by historians. The turmoils of a presidential term must be resolved and a little of the dust of time must have accumulated to obtain a proper perspective of any President's successes and failures, as well as his brushes with greatness and ignominy.

Unfortunately for Mr. Obama, many people, myself included, feel that the facts of the past eight years give lie to his constant claims of greatness. At this point in history the shrill claims of his loyal sycophants, as well as his own strident boasts, cloud the issue of legacy.

The liberal press will try to replace historians as the impartial scribes of the Obama years. But they have already failed in their duty to be a source of impartial news for America and the world. They were blind and deaf to what they did not want to see and hear. They will have their own legacy and it will not be kind to them.

By the time Obama's true legacy is in print, I will, most likely, not be around to read it. I think I already know the basics and, for me, that is adequate. I suspect, once out of the White House, he will write his own self-serving version of the Obama years. That will not be his legacy.  Read from an informed point of view, it will be his apology. Note to Barack: You can't do it yourself.