Obama’s Agenda: Too Big Not to Fail

Human Events ^ | 6-11-2010 | Gary Bauer

[Wolf13]

It is often said in politics that if both sides are angry with you, then you must be doing something right. If you’re being assailed from the Right and the Left, then you can probably take pride in having avoided the demands of the extremes and arriving at the pragmatic center.

That’s the narrative many Democratic spinmeisters no doubt would like us to believe about President Obama and his congressional allies. But it doesn’t apply. Yes liberal activists are noisy, and the Tea Partiers are upset. But so are many other Americans across the political spectrum. Liberal outrage only underscores how radical the Left’s agenda is, and how grand its expectations of Obama were.

First it needs to be said that there is plenty for Americans of all political stripes to be angry about. Obama’s solemn campaign promises of unprecedented transparency and accountability seem laughable now. His administration’s role in fixing primary contests may have been a crime.

Many who believed Obama’s stirring campaign rhetoric about standing up to rogue regimes have come to realize they were lied to. His complete disregard for human rights violations in places like China, Iran and Sudan is enough to make even the most wide-eyed young Obama supporter disillusioned.

For those who believed that a man who hadn’t run anything in his life except a Senate office would be able to run the country, Obama’s ham-handed response to the Gulf oil spill has been a wake-up call. A talent for reading a teleprompter hardly suggests competence to be leader of the free world.

Recently we’ve heard a lot about liberals who are frustrated about the pace of hope and change. A Politico story this week suggested, “the left has a message for Barack Obama: Shape up or we’re shipping out.”

[Obadiah]

The reason Bush had such low approval numbers was because the left detested him (as they do any Republican) and the right abandoned him. So hacking off both right and left is not a sign of playing it down the middle.

[musicman]

"Obama’s Agenda: Too Big Not to Fail"