Trash-talking Obama nixes bipartisanship

Trash-talking Obama nixes bipartisanship

Nolan Finley
Detroit News
Oct. 21, 2011

To the long list of things Barack Obama was expected to be as president but hasn't been, add this: He was supposed to bring class to a White House the left felt had been sullied for eight years by a boorish cowboy.

But like so much of the potential that voters saw in Obama, a dignified presidency is not what they got. Instead, they have a president who is becoming increasingly combative, tossing out taunts and jeers and challenging his opponents to fight.

Here's Obama this week mocking the GOP for rejecting the jobs bill even many Democrats recognize as a train wreck: "Maybe they just couldn't understand the whole thing all at once."

"So we're going to break it up into bite-size pieces so they can take a thoughtful approach to this legislation."

Say what you will about George W. Bush, but he understood a president can't openly wallow in partisan mud and still be effective. He was a gentleman, and shouldered responsibility when it belonged to him. Those aren't characteristics to which Obama can lay claim.

Obama's M.O., stretching back to the debate over Obamacare, is to condescend when hit with criticism.

Question the consequences of his rushed-through policies, and he dubs you stupid, as he did this week with the GOP. Or, in the case of the Supreme Court justices at his State of the Union address, un-American.

Is this the guy whose empathetic demeanor was supposed to heal the nation's divide?

Ironically, Obama did his latest Don Rickles routine while declaring Washington must move beyond partisanship and work together to rally the economy.

You don't foster bipartisanship by constantly trashing the other party.

This is the most partisan president in modern history. He's built no trust with an opposition party that's learned he'll turn every engagement to his own political advantage.

While vilifying the GOP for rejecting his jobs bill — with the help of some fiscally responsible Democrats, by the way — he has given not one ounce of consideration to the Republican proposals to fix the economy.

He also has disengaged from the bipartisan congressional supercommittee that's seeking solutions for the still-ballooning budget deficit.

Instead of working with the committee on a plan everyone can live with — and one that serves the needs of the nation — he's sent take-it-or-leave-it ultimatums that dovetail with his campaign themes.

A jobs crisis of this magnitude demands the undivided attention of the president and Congress.

Instead, Obama is on his second taxpayer-funded campaign tour in three months, spouting the rhetoric of a candidate rather than a leader.

Campaigning is his comfort zone. Leading is more challenging. Not surprising, as he never led anything before becoming leader of the free world.

He's attacking the incompetence of Washington, positioning himself as an outsider instead of the guy on whose desk the buck should stop.

Scapegoating Republicans doesn't mask the truth that his party held a monopoly on Washington for two years and he couldn't pass a budget.

The president has committed the nation to 13 months of inaction on cleaning up its economic disaster while he campaigns full-time to keep his job. His chances would be better if behaved less like a combative candidate and more like the uniting leader he pledged to be.

It doesn't matter what political board I'm at, I read the same comments (ad infinitum) by Democrats who seem to think Obama bent over backwards to be bipartisan. Obama has never tried to work with the GOP. He has trashed the GOP every chance he has in order to embarrass them into caving in to his mindless job killing schemes. At no time during his term has he shown leadership. Ever! What he has shown that he is thinned-skinned when anyone dares to disagree.

He's nothing but a thug politician who brought Chicago style politics to Washington. When this country needed a leader the most, all we got was a ineffective community organizer.... and I expected nothing more.

And anyone who had done even a modicum of research on this Marxist radical would have known that Obama was the least experienced, the least prepared and the most radical President we have ever elected... EVER!

He makes Woodrow Wilson look like Reagan. And anyone with a passing familiarity with American history will know how bad that is.