Obama the Great?

Obama is not a “transformational” leader. He’s simply the oldest kind of leader there ever was — the kind who transfers wealth from those who produce it to those who are politically favored. Read “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” The final centuries and decades of that society were littered with equivalents of “Obama the Great.” People thought — or, more accurately — hoped these leaders were doing something for the people when in reality they merely manipulated and controlled them. In many ways, it’s harder to fool people today. But many people still foolishly hope for the impossible, mired down in their own magical thinking. They apply it to their politicians no less than their personal lives.

Kings (elected or otherwise) do not create wealth, nor even “stimulate” it; they merely seize it and move it around. Obama is not a particularly skillful mover of wealth. He’s no Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who made it look to the masses like he actually was doing something other than mindlessly interfering in the private economy and stifling economic growth in the process (which, of course, he was). Obama got to where he is because he’s smooth, cool and articulate, even though he has nothing to say and it took no character to become a liberal socialist in the circles he inhabits. From day one, after his famous speech to the Democratic National Convention back in 2004, he was elevated to celebrity status because of the way he talked more than anything he said. In the early months of his presidency, he enjoyed the standard popularity most new Presidents enjoy more because of the way he did things than for what he actually did. Once people started paying attention to what he actually did, his popularity shrank to the bare minimum that any liberal Democrat would enjoy from the most liberal of Democrats who comprise about a third of the American population. Obama’s current constituency consists of the people who enthusiastically voted for Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale and John Kerry. That’s not enough to stay in power. If Obama does stay in power, he will only achieve victory due to the typical incompetence of his cowardly opposition.

But one thing is certain: Obama will never win the battle for history. He will just be another in a string of incompetents who participated in the slow yet decisive unraveling of America. If Americans would only wake up, Obama could be the last in a long line of incompetents before the people, at last, overthrew their elected kings.