Charlatan in Chief

The president’s critics refer to him as the food stamp president.  His fans know him as the hope and change president.  President Obama’s pronouncements suggest a different title.

In his recent weekly address the president said the nation should return to “American values like fairness and responsibility.” A Weekly Standard article explains why an appeal to fairness from this president is ludicrous.

Which is most fair: a tax reform that encourages work and investment, closes loopholes while lowering rates, and ends penalties for marriage and child rearing; or a policy that narrows the base while increasing rates, creates opportunities for rent-seeking with loopholes and subsidies, and adds a new layer of complexity to the tax code? Which is more fair: an energy plan that unlocks America’s oil, natural gas, and nuclear resources so they might reach their fullest potential, or a policy that caters to the green lobby and shovels taxpayer dollars at pie-in-the sky, bankrupt wind and solar companies   And while we are on the subject of fairness, exactly how “fair ‘ is it to the young and unborn to do nothing as America’s fiscal liabilities pile up higher and higher.

Well, you get the idea.

In his State of the Union address he claimed to believe what Abraham Lincoln believed: “That government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more.”

So parents need Michelle to tell them what to feed their children.  It’s the government’s job to mandate light bulbs, and, according to Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood, “to coerce people out of their cars.”

The president has also resurrected the Truman strategy of blaming the nation’s continuing economic travails on a “do-nothing Congress.” (Has this man never had an original idea?)  Apparently he hasn’t noticed that the Republican House has approved at least 15 bills to promote economic growth and job creation that the Democrat-controlled Senate refuses to consider.  He also seems to have forgotten that until a few months ago, it was a Democrat controlled Congress.

Finally, on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the president endorsed the principle “that government should not intrude on private family matters.” It is, however, acceptable for government to make families buy government-designed health insurance.

Leo Rosten, in The Joys of Yiddish, defines chutzpah as “gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, incredible ‘guts,’ presumption plus arrogance.” The president is like the burglar who breaks a window while robbing your home and, when apprehended, sues you because he cut himself on the glass.