After 100 days in the White House, President Barack Obama has yet to give my blog a bailout. I simply assumed the massive government coddling would reach my tiny corner of the web, but instead of writing my blog posts, federal burecrats were too busy tapping the phones of the Greatest Generation. Better luck next time I suppose. I could always secure my government check by converting this blog to a pro-Obama hub that the sycophants at MSNBC could appreciate, but don’t we have enough mind-bending articles comparing Michelle Obama to Jackie Kennedy?
I feel like I should deck the halls and blow up some balloons. Obama’s 100 day mark is no big deal, but the mainstream media is christening it as the greatest holiday in the world. I frankly don’t blame the media for getting so giddy. Someone with an absymally mediocre background that they supported has managed to keep the country in tact after 100 days. Despite President Obama’s poor leadership and lack of executive experience, America still lives. He is fortunate to be leader of a nation that knows how to persevere under any administration.
100 days isn’t enough to determine greatness, but we’ve already heard our president compared to Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Kennedy. When did these men bow to Jefferson Davis, Hitler, or Castro?
A great president acknowledges, reveres, and promotes the greatness of the nation he stewards. President Obama seems to think that the United States is greatly only because it elected him President, but even that could not silence his profuse apologies to the rest of the world.
What good is an American President that doesn’t believe in American Exceptionalism? If you can’t cheer for your own team, you can’t expect to be a good team captain. America’s own team captain seems more regretful of the sport itself than the actual plays that supposedly lost the game.
Condemning a nation to correct the mistakes of its government does not make one humble. One can be humble without being apologetic, and President Obama is quite good at being the latter, especially when he is in other countries.
When President Obama offered his apologies for America’s behavior to a crowd in Strasbourg, France, he made little attempt to distinguish President Bush’s policies from America as a whole. Even though his likely intention was to apologize for Bush’s actions, Obama threw America under the bus without hesitation. America was dismissive and arrognt, and America failed to appreciate Europe, our president declared. One couldn’t tell from Obama’s speech that Bush was the source of regret.
This isn’t the best time to feel sorry for being an American. When you’re jobless, broke, in foreclosure, and running from the Swine Flu, the last thing you need to hear is that your very citizenship is shameful. We are told to feel guilty at a time when we sorely need another Morning in America.
If the world is truly headed toward a post-American era, as some in the media are reporting, Obama’s apologies are truly unwelcome. It will be diffcult to reverse the post-American trend when our national pride is all but gone. Try getting someone to uplift their country when they are told repeatedly that their country is nothing special. If the world is truly facing a life without its greatest country, President Obama’s apologies are hastening our moral decline.
It would help if President Obama took his role a little more seriously. Aside from the numerous policy disagreements I have with this Preisdent, I find his style of leadership extremely annoying. Obama treats the presidency like a teenager that just got behind the wheel of his new car. He can drive his shiny new toy to different places and show it off, but forgets the immense responsibility that he has everytime he hits the road. I am especially reminded of President Obama’s appearance on the Tonight Show, where he gleamed with joy as he told Jay Leno how cool it was to ride Air Force One.
It goes back again to the issue of greatness. Presidents Reagan and Bush understood the enormity of their positions, and regarded themselves as servants to the principles embodied in the Oval Office. The Presidency was bigger than they were, which meant the virtues that they were elected to protect came from something more powerful and sacred. To show respect, they would never even be without a jacket in the Oval Office, a tradition quickly abandoned by President Obama.
President Obama must find humility in himself by reconnecting with the greatness of the country he serves. It shouldn’t take him 100 days to do this, but he may just be waiting for someone to spell it out on his teleprompter.
