When Barack Obama was running for President back in 2008, he famously announced that his goal was to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.” Now many of us felt that we already had a pretty darn good country, and many doubted that Obama would be able to change America all that much. Unfortunately, I would suggest that this President has indeed changed the United States, and the world, a great deal. And it hasn’t been for the good.
First, on the domestic front. The dream of big government liberals for generations now has been socialized medicine. FDR couldn’t accomplish it. Nor could Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, or even Bill Clinton. But Barack Obama did. Obamacare now has its claws in 1/7th of the American economy. And it’s a disaster. Americans are now paying more, and getting less. Obamacare is well on the way towards turning what was the best healthcare on the globe, into something that’s mediocre at best. But Obama got it done. He’s transforming America.
Next, unemployment. The Obama Administration has been bragging that they’ve got the unemployment rate down to 5.6%. What they don’t tell you is that this has been the slowest economic recovery after a recession since World War II. And even more discouraging, the percent of Americans with a job, who want one, is worse than it’s been since Jimmy Carter was President (1978). Why is this? The Obama Administration’s anti-business policies: over-regulation, higher taxes, Obamacare, etc. Fewer Americans working – more Americans dependent on the government. The transformation of America.
And next, President Obama seems determined to govern by executive fiat, and disregard the elected representatives of the American people. If he can’t get his more liberal immigration laws through Congress, he just instructs the federal immigration bureaucracy not to enforce our laws. After all, he figures that the vast majority of illegal immigrants will eventually vote for his party, and therefore give Democrats more power, to enact even more liberal immigration and other laws, and on and on. Transforming America.
In the area of foreign policy, President Obama’s legacy is even more far-reaching, and dangerous, for America, and for the world. The United States has been the world’s leader, at least since World War I and World War II. Barack Obama has systematically tried to change that. But leading from behind doesn’t work for America. And except for a few bad actors on the world scene, like Iran, and Cuba, and ISIS, and Russia’s Putin, it doesn’t work for peace-loving people around the globe either.
Obama has dissed many of our traditional allies around the world, from England, to Canada, to Saudi Arabia; and bent over backwards to accommodate the world’s worst America-haters, like the Mullahs of Iran, and the Castros of Cuba.
And perhaps the most disgraceful backhand given to a friend, has been Obama’s disdainful treatment of Israel, and especially her Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. It began with Obama’s apology tour through the Middle East earlier in his presidency, proceeded through his nuclear negotiations with Iran, which will leave Israel at existential risk, and now has Obama apparently considering allowing a Palestinian state, whether Israel likes it or not.
Of course this transformational President did get us out of Iraq. Even if that foolish move led directly to the rise of ISIS, and thousands and thousands of Christians and moderate Muslims losing their heads, or being crucified, or being burnt alive, or if they were lucky, merely becoming slaves or refugees. But that’s what happens when you have an arrogant, over-confident leader, with nothing to be over-confident about.
The bottom line is, Barack Obama truly is transforming America, and the world, into a different place. Unfortunately it’s a less desirable, and more dangerous place than the one he inherited.