Kickoff for Obama '12...the next election

[RightField]

This is the kickoff to his election campaign. It can only get better from here, right? This sounds like the "official" start, though many would suspect that it started one cold day in January in '08 on the mall in DC.

April 23, 2011
The Unhappy President
By Jonah Goldberg

The Oval Office, I always thought I was going to have really cool phones and stuff. . . . I'm like, "C'mon guys, I'm the president of the United States. Where's the fancy buttons and stuff and the big screen comes up?" It doesn't happen. - Pres. Barack H. Obama

The list of people I feel sorry for is long. It includes not just all of the people I know personally who are suffering from one misfortune or another, but the billions around the world who're having a rougher time than they ought: Japanese earthquake victims, targets of ethnic cleansing, etc. Then there's the supplemental list, which includes everyone from fans of Lost who were ripped off by the series finale to the guy in the middle seat on a long flight.

But one guy who doesn't make the list is Barack Obama.

And yet the president seems eager for people to know he feels aggrieved. All of a sudden, he's had a few "hot mic" incidents in which he "accidentally" vented his displeasure about various alleged insults. His staff let it be known that the president feels the head of China's one-party authoritarian regime has it better than him, because no one second-guesses Hu Jintao.

"I just miss - I miss being anonymous," he told some magazine executives recently. "I miss Saturday morning, rolling out of bed, not shaving, getting into my car with my girls . . . taking walks. I can't take a walk." He says the reason he plays so much golf is that it's the only way he can get away from the "bubble" he's in.

None of this is entirely new. The president has always had a gift for self-pity. And blame-shifting. "It's Bush's fault" could be the subtitle of his presidency.

And from the outset, the president has had little patience with critics. Serious critiques are always illegitimate "talking points." In the summer of '09 he started insisting that he didn't want to hear "a lot of talking" from Republicans. The time for debate always seems to be over when it's clear to everyone that he's losing the argument. When abroad, he loves to whine about the impertinence of the press.

I can't prove it, but I'm also hardly alone (on the right or the left) in thinking the president really just doesn't like the job anymore. He's testier. His response to the Republican budget plan was not merely dishonest, hypocritical, and partisan, it was bitterly personal.

One can understand his frustration. The guy who once said to a reporter during the 2008 campaign, "You know, I actually believe my own bulls***" about fundamentally transforming America, is now forced to run as a reactionary, defending "Medicare as we know it" from "radicals" who - gasp! - want to change America. The overrated and inexperienced politician, accustomed to nothing but adulation, who was swept into office thanks to discontent with the incumbent, is now himself the incumbent desperately trying to explain how he's done nothing wrong.

He demonized George W. Bush as an evil fool, but Obama has been forced to adopt many of the very policies he derided as evil and foolish. The "change" candidate is now the "more of the same" guy.

That'd put anybody in a funk.

But I don't care. The presidency is not like his Nobel Prize - an award for just being you. If you hate the job, don't run.

Moreover, I don't think that's the whole story. Many of his seemingly self-pitying jokes and asides just don't seem that innocent to me, never mind endearing.

He may sincerely have wished his awesome job came with a cooler phone (or a Bat Signal perhaps?), and he may honestly feel trapped in a bubble. But he's also determined to pretend that he is running "against Washington" in 2012. And that is outrageous nonsense for a president who effectively owned the government for two years.

Already his campaign's messaging is all about recapturing the feeling of insurgency from the first time around. Finish the mission. Complete the work. Remember the feeling. That's why he's running his reelection campaign out of Chicago, as if people won't notice he's the incumbent.

Obama has never run on a record. He's always run almost literally on a hope and a prayer. Now he must defend what he has done - and what he has failed to do.

If that makes him cranky, that's just too bad.

 

[JenAltArmy]

ONE THOUGHT


Over the years there have been many songs about one, buying his or her way into heaven. So what is obama going to do with $1,000,000,000 of other people’s money? What is he really going to purchase?

This is the kickoff to his election campaign. It can only get better from here, right? This sounds like the "official" start, though many would suspect that it started one cold day in January in '08 on the mall in DC.

April 23, 2011
The Unhappy President
By Jonah Goldberg

The Oval Office, I always thought I was going to have really cool phones and stuff. . . . I'm like, "C'mon guys, I'm the president of the United States. Where's the fancy buttons and stuff and the big screen comes up?" It doesn't happen. - Pres. Barack H. Obama

The list of people I feel sorry for is long. It includes not just all of the people I know personally who are suffering from one misfortune or another, but the billions around the world who're having a rougher time than they ought: Japanese earthquake victims, targets of ethnic cleansing, etc. Then there's the supplemental list, which includes everyone from fans of Lost who were ripped off by the series finale to the guy in the middle seat on a long flight.

But one guy who doesn't make the list is Barack Obama.

And yet the president seems eager for people to know he feels aggrieved. All of a sudden, he's had a few "hot mic" incidents in which he "accidentally" vented his displeasure about various alleged insults. His staff let it be known that the president feels the head of China's one-party authoritarian regime has it better than him, because no one second-guesses Hu Jintao.

"I just miss - I miss being anonymous," he told some magazine executives recently. "I miss Saturday morning, rolling out of bed, not shaving, getting into my car with my girls . . . taking walks. I can't take a walk." He says the reason he plays so much golf is that it's the only way he can get away from the "bubble" he's in.

None of this is entirely new. The president has always had a gift for self-pity. And blame-shifting. "It's Bush's fault" could be the subtitle of his presidency.

And from the outset, the president has had little patience with critics. Serious critiques are always illegitimate "talking points." In the summer of '09 he started insisting that he didn't want to hear "a lot of talking" from Republicans. The time for debate always seems to be over when it's clear to everyone that he's losing the argument. When abroad, he loves to whine about the impertinence of the press.

I can't prove it, but I'm also hardly alone (on the right or the left) in thinking the president really just doesn't like the job anymore. He's testier. His response to the Republican budget plan was not merely dishonest, hypocritical, and partisan, it was bitterly personal.

One can understand his frustration. The guy who once said to a reporter during the 2008 campaign, "You know, I actually believe my own bulls***" about fundamentally transforming America, is now forced to run as a reactionary, defending "Medicare as we know it" from "radicals" who - gasp! - want to change America. The overrated and inexperienced politician, accustomed to nothing but adulation, who was swept into office thanks to discontent with the incumbent, is now himself the incumbent desperately trying to explain how he's done nothing wrong.

He demonized George W. Bush as an evil fool, but Obama has been forced to adopt many of the very policies he derided as evil and foolish. The "change" candidate is now the "more of the same" guy.

That'd put anybody in a funk.

But I don't care. The presidency is not like his Nobel Prize - an award for just being you. If you hate the job, don't run.

Moreover, I don't think that's the whole story. Many of his seemingly self-pitying jokes and asides just don't seem that innocent to me, never mind endearing.

He may sincerely have wished his awesome job came with a cooler phone (or a Bat Signal perhaps?), and he may honestly feel trapped in a bubble. But he's also determined to pretend that he is running "against Washington" in 2012. And that is outrageous nonsense for a president who effectively owned the government for two years.

Already his campaign's messaging is all about recapturing the feeling of insurgency from the first time around. Finish the mission. Complete the work. Remember the feeling. That's why he's running his reelection campaign out of Chicago, as if people won't notice he's the incumbent.

Obama has never run on a record. He's always run almost literally on a hope and a prayer. Now he must defend what he has done - and what he has failed to do.

If that makes him cranky, that's just too bad.

 

[phrodeau]

Translation: "These few offhand comments made by Obama have been drilled into my ears by my favorite biased info sources, so I'm going to show how much I don't care by filling up my blog with whining."

 

[JustaSCOUNDREL]

President Obama spent millions of dollars to get elected and then bitched about what he had inherited. Inherited my ass.

This man is in so far over his head down looks like up to him. As for electioneering every single speech he has made since his election has been a campaign speech.

Considering the potential field running against him in '12 he will win again. It will be a long 4 years for America especially if the GOP takes the senate.

I don't think he knew could not just vote present as President of the United States of America.

Great post RightField. Thanks

 

[Saint Peter]

How happy is America with the tea baggers?

It will be a good fight.

 

[RightField]

I will be curious to see what direction he takes his election...whether it will be some sort of misty Camelot type campaign that completely ignores his record and tries to recapture the "hope and change" theme or one that sits solidly on the work he's done up to this point as part of a future context for America. We still haven't seen any type of governing philosophy from them, other than "give generously from the treasury to friends who give to us."

What we've seen so far in the last couple years is a long series of bait and switch where he says something like our number one job is creating an environment that helps create new jobs....and then implements programs that help union friends and others like Al Sharpton at the expense of job creation. Card check, for example, would be like pulling up the drawbridge to job creation with union friends establishing higher pay and making it impossible to create new jobs and competition....right up until the business fails like GM did. It would simple accelerate the destruction of jobs.

Right now, their core constituencies are the welfare-as-a-career-choice crowd (to include those that run and support ACORN and other similar 'city' organizations), unions, trial lawyers (keep the law gray so they can collect big in courts) and blacks. As I see it, this is an election of those who work and want to work vs. those who think its much easier to figure out a way to collect from Obama favor/waivers than work.

They know they need the middle class to get above 30% of the vote and are trying desparately to appeal to them in a style that reminds me of a pickpocket with neat-sounding "party-slogans", bromides and bright colors on one hand as a diversion while with the other hand reaching into their pockets. Their party slogan as it regards the middle class should be "Not only can we fleece you, we can make you feel good about it at the same time (with a happy face )"

I'll give you an example, they talk about taxing the rich more, but what most people haven't figured out is that taxing ALL the money the rich make wouldn't even come close to covering this year's deficit and wouldn't make a dent in the total debt. They know that they need far more money than what they can get from "the rich" and while they're targeting the rich, they're discussing new tax revenue sources such as the VAT which would hit EVERYONE who buys anything...a large tax increase that mostly hits the middle class. Property taxes are already spiking...are you middle class and do you pay property taxes...I think so (Hold your wallets close).

Where do you think he's going to take his campaign?

 

[RightField]

So, what direction will the dems go?

 

[RightField]

From the dependably liberal Washington Post:

Obama out of depth in troubled times
By Jennifer Rubin
Washington Post...Today (Monday).

President Obama’s approval ratings are languishing in the mid-40s again. Conservatives argue that Obama lacks executive acumen. They say that he’s a prisoner of leftist ideology, immune to facts and experience. There’s a lot to all of that.

But what we’ve learned over the past couple of years is that Obama, in no small part due, one can surmise, to years of fawning by rapt liberal academics and pols anxious to praise every utterance, is thin on knowledge and nearly entirely bereft of strategic thinking.

He’s articulate and can be (at the Arizona memorial, for example) an inspired speaker. But what does he know? Does anyone aside from his devoted spinners imagine that he grasped the limits of the United Nations and other international bodies, understood the frailty of Middle Eastern despots, correctly analyzed the root of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, appreciated the history of Keynesian failure or perceived the enormity of our looming debt crisis? As the problems become more acute, his limitations become more obvious. At this point it’s hard to imagine that he could hold his own on the same stage with Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and debate their respective budget plans.

Obama has relied throughout his career on a mix of glossy rhetoric and clever pop psychology. But ask those who observed him during his brief Senate career if he showed a depth of understanding or interest on major legislation. You’ll find he wasn’t much concerned with the details of legislation or the substance of policy debates. Unlike Ronald Reagan, who had fixed principles and an overarching vision of the major international challenges we faced, Obama perpetually vamps. Each crisis and challenge comes as a surprise and is viewed in isolation from other events. He can’t fathom that there are flaws in his own inch-deep theories (e.g., Israeli settlements are the barrier to Middle East peace) or that there are well-reasoned alternative views (e.g., our Syria engagement policy is a moral and strategic flop).

As a result what we have seen is a series of herky-jerky tactical moves intended to maneuver past immediate problems but lacking in strategic purpose. Get Libyan critics off his back? Give a speech and conduct a half-hearted war. Check the budget criticism and the rise of Ryan? Again give a speech but one devoid of fiscal seriousness and easily debunked (not to mention taken as a signal by Standard & Poor’s of the insolubility of our debt problems). In the midst of the 2011 continuing resolution negotiations, he issued a peevish veto threat — but to what end and for what reason? Increasingly, Obama seems to lack the ability to think more than a step ahead.

His has become a reactive, not to mention reactionary, presidency. He moves only when forced to (by Ryan on the budget or France on Libya). He struggles to defend a LBJ domestic agenda and constructs a foreign policy combining the worst of contradictory impulses (cut defense, attach self-defeating caveats to the exercise of American power, attempt to outsource leadership).

Obama and his defenders whine that these are tough times, tougher than any mortal could be expected to manage. But that’s poppycock. Reagan faced a collapse of American confidence, a sky-high “misery index”and an emboldened Soviet Union. George W. Bush faced the worst attack on American soil in 60 years. All presidents face challenges. The question is do they have the character, the depth of knowledge and the skill to manage them. In Obama’s case there is reason to doubt that he does

 

[miles]

Obama and his defenders whine that these are tough times, tougher than any mortal could be expected to manage. But that’s poppycock. Reagan faced a collapse of American confidence, a sky-high “misery index”and an emboldened Soviet Union. George W. Bush faced the worst attack on American soil in 60 years. All presidents face challenges. The question is do they have the character, the depth of knowledge and the skill to manage them. In Obama’s case there is reason to doubt that he does

So now the WaPo is questioning his character, skill, and knowledge....it took them three years to figure out Obama is a Triple Threat of Incompetence.

 

[RightField]

So now the WaPo is questioning his character, skill, and knowledge....it took them three years to figure out Obama is a Triple Threat of Incompetence.

lol..yes...but Jennifer Rubin is not representative of the WAPO in general. It's surprising that they put her article into print though.

 

[unregistered]

 

[miles]

They had to be hit in the face with a wet mop before they got the picture.

Wanna bet they'll endorse him in 2012?

 

[unregistered]

 

[miles]

lol..yes...but Jennifer Rubin is not representative of the WAPO in general. It's surprising that they put her article into print though.

She'll probably have a "mysterious" accident soon.

 

[RightField]

Thank you Mr. President for wrapping up the Bin Laden effort.

Now, lets get back to the economy, jobs and the deficit. As I remember last, the Republicans had put a plan together and you gave a muddled speech critisizing it and offering nothing of your own other than some platitudes about needing to cut the budget but claiming that nothing except the defense budget can be cut. Have you come up with a real or credible plan yet?

 

[eyer]

Obama's approval is up 9 points after taking out Osama...

 

[RightField]

Obama's approval is up 9 points after taking out Osama...

Yeah, I'm sure he's going to want to ride that horse as long as it can stand, but we are still running up to some critical points, not to mention the millions who are looking forward to an economic rebound so they can get jobs again.

 

[eyer]

Yeah, I'm sure he's going to want to ride that horse as long as it can stand, but we are still running up to some critical points, not to mention the millions who are looking forward to an economic rebound so they can get jobs again.

OathKeepers have activated Operation Sleeping Giant: Awakening Veterans to Get off the U.S.S. Economic Titanic and Back Onboard the U.S.S. Constitution.

http://oathkeepers.org/oath/2011/04...anic-and-back-onboard-the-u-s-s-constitution/

 

[eyer]

Obama's approval is up 9 points after taking out Osama...

Rasmussen says the president experienced no noticeable spike...

 

[RightField]

History lessons for Obama and other liberals
By George F. Will, Published: May 11

Outside the venue where Rep. Paul Ryan recently spoke in Madison, Wis., a university town never lacking protesters, one product of America’s education system shouted that Ryan’s budget proposal would return America to the bad old days of the “18th-century robber barons.” The young man, full of zeal and destitute of information, does not know that those capitalists of whom he disapproves — the ones who built the railroads and other sinews of the nation’s industrial might — operated in the second half of the 19th century, not in 18th-century agrarian America.

Last month, Barack Obama was asked by an interviewer from Texas why he is so unpopular there. Obama replied: “Texas has always been a pretty Republican state, for, you know, historic reasons.” Well, yes, “always” — if you believe, as many baby boomers seem to, that the world began when they became more or less sentient. But, for the record:

Texas, one of the 11 states of the Confederacy, was, for historic reasons, part of the solidly Democratic South for almost a century after the Civil War. Deeply Protestant Texas voted for Republican Herbert Hoover against Al Smith, a Catholic New Yorker, for president in 1928, but it did not vote for a Republican presidential candidate again until Dwight Eisenhower carried the state in 1952 and 1956. It did not do so again until it picked Richard Nixon in 1972. Four years later, it embraced Jimmy Carter. Other than during Reconstruction, Texas did not elect a Republican senator until 1961 (John Tower) and did not elect a second one (Phil Gramm) until 1984, and there were not as many as three Texas Republicans in the U.S. House until 1968. Republicans were not a majority of the state’s congressional delegation until 2005.

Responding to Ryan’s budget proposal, Obama said it “would lead to a fundamentally different America than the one we’ve known certainly in my lifetime. In fact, I think it would be fundamentally different than what we’ve known throughout our history.”

Well. It is unclear what “fundamentally” means to Obama, but consider some possible metrics of what is, and is not, different than what we have known “throughout our history.” Ryan’s plan would reduce federal spending as a percentage of GDP from the 2009-11 average of 24.4 to 19.9 in 10 years. It was not until the nation was 158 years old — in the Depression year of 1934, with the New Deal erupting — that peacetime federal spending topped 10 percent of GDP, and it did not reach 12 percent until the war preparations of 1941.

Ryan’s plan would alter Medicare. But Medicare has existed in its current configuration for only 46 of the nation’s 235 years.

Ryan’s plan would involve some seniors paying more of the costs of routine health care. But what is anomalous, viewed in the context of “our history,” is today’s “12 cents” problem. That is the portion of every health dollar paid by the person receiving the care. Fifty years ago, when John Kennedy became president and the nation was 185 years old, the figure was 47 cents.

Ryan’s plan would expand states’ discretion in the administration of Medicaid by making it a block-grant program. Would it make America, in Obama’s words, “fundamentally different than what we’ve known throughout our history” to take this small step away from the practice of reducing states to administrative extensions of the federal government?

The hysteria and hyperbole about Ryan’s plan arise, in part, from a poverty of today’s liberal imagination, an inability to think beyond the straight-line continuation of programs from the second and third quarters of the last century. It is odd that “progressives,” as liberals now wish to be called, have such a constricted notion of the possibilities of progress.

Liberals think Medicare and Social Security as they exist are “fundamental” to the nation’s identity. But liberals think the Constitution — which the Framers meant to be fundamental, meaning constituting, law — should be construed as a “living” document, continually evolving to take different meanings under whatever liberals consider new social imperatives.

The lesson of all this is that one’s sense of possibilities — and proprieties — is shaped by what we know, and often do not know, about history. The regnant ideology within the Obama administration and among congressional Democrats is reactionary liberalism, the conviction that whatever government programs exist should forever exist because they always have existed. That is, as baby boomers, in their narcissism — or perhaps solipsism; or both — understand “always.”

 

[phrodeau]

Rasmussen says the president experienced no noticeable spike...

Rasmussen thinks it's newsworthy to index the difference between those who strongly approve and those who strongly disapprove, regardless of the numbers in the middle.

 

[miles]

"The young man, full of zeal and destitute of information."

How very appropriate. Great line.

 

[RightField]

George Will comes up with some great lines.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Petey nailed it...

The El Paso speech is notable not for breaking any new ground on immigration, but for perfectly illustrating Obama’s political style: the professorial, almost therapeutic, invitation to civil discourse, wrapped around the basest of rhetorical devices — charges of malice compounded with accusations of bad faith. “They’ll never be satisfied,” said Obama about border control. “And I understand that. That’s politics.”

How understanding. The other side plays “politics,” Obama acts in the public interest. Their eyes are on poll numbers, political power, the next election; Obama’s rest fixedly on the little children.

This impugning of motives is an Obama constant. “They” play politics with deficit reduction, with government shutdowns, with health care. And now immigration. It is ironic that such a charge should be made in a speech that is nothing but politics. There is zero chance of any immigration legislation passing Congress in the next two years. El Paso was simply an attempt to gin up the Hispanic vote as part of an openly political two-city, three-event campaign swing in preparation for 2012.

Accordingly, the El Paso speech featured two other staples: the breathtaking invention and the statistical sleight of hand.

“The [border] fence is now basically complete,” asserted the president. Complete? There are now 350 miles of pedestrian fencing along the Mexican border. The border is 1,954 miles long. That’s 18 percent. And only one-tenth of that 18 percent is the double and triple fencing that has proved so remarkably effective in, for example, the Yuma sector. Another 299 miles — 15 percent — are vehicle barriers that pedestrians can walk right through.

Obama then boasted that on his watch, 31 percent more drugs have been seized, 64 percent more weapons — proof of how he has secured the border. And for more proof: Apprehension of illegal immigrants is down 40 percent. Down? Indeed, says Obama, this means that fewer people are trying to cross the border.

Interesting logic. Seizures of drugs and guns go up — proof of effective border control. Seizures of people go down — yet more proof of effective border control. Up or down, it matters not. Whatever the numbers, Obama vindicates himself.

You can believe this flimflam or you can believe the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office. The GAO reported in February that less than half the border is under “operational control” of the government. Which undermines the entire premise of Obama’s charge that, because the border is effectively secure, “Republicans who said they supported broader reform as long as we got serious about enforcement” didn’t really mean it.

Charles Krauthammer
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/267122

How many times recently have we heard the slander, "Republicans want their benefits, but they don't want to pay for them," coupled with, if you want what you were forced to pay for (figuratively at the point of government's gun), then you're a hypocrite!


__________________
Sideshow Barry Barker 2012 Says: "It's NOT the economy, Stupid!" It's the Birthers! The Tea Party! SARAH PALIN!
http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/files/2011/04/obama-wide-grin80.jpg

 

[RightField]

Alligators, Moats and Other Such Nonsense
By Victor Davis Hanson
May 19, 2011

President Obama gave what was billed as an important speech on immigration last week near the border in El Paso, Texas. Unfortunately, it was one of the most demagogic moments in recent presidential history. Nearly everything Obama said was either factually incorrect or deliberately misleading.

Why, 28 months into the Obama presidency, is there now a sudden push to pass "comprehensive" immigration reform? After all, from 2009 to early 2011, Obama had large Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate. Why hasn't Obama already rammed through his own immigration bill, as he did with health care?

The answer, of course, is that about 70 percent of the American people consistently poll against the president's initiatives on illegal immigration. Obama simply did not want to sign an easily passable bill that would earn him further unpopularity.

But now he has lost the House. A close re-election bid looms. The president is enjoying a sudden bounce in popularity after the capture of Osama bin Laden. He needs to firm up his base of Latino supporters. Presto: time to blame Republicans for his own past unwillingness to get a bill through his Democratic Congress.

Obama's demagoguery seemed to work on the crowd in El Paso. It interrupted the president's speech to answer, "Tear it down," when he mentioned the border fence. The audience booed, and jeered on cue, "They're racist," when he went after Republicans. And it joined Obama, the sudden cheerleader in chief, in chanting, "Yes, we can."

In blaming Republicans, Obama charged that their fears about open borders were groundless since, "The fence is now basically complete." And to emphasize that claim, he mocked his opponents by saying, "Maybe they'll need a moat. Maybe they'll need alligators in the moat."

That sounds cute. But it is again quite untrue. The fence is most assuredly not "basically" complete. Currently, fewer than 700 miles of the more than 1,900-mile border have any sort of barrier. And less than 5 percent of the border has a secure double-fenced impediment. Even with increased patrols, a recent Government Accountability Office study found that 40 percent of the border is essentially open and unguarded. There are still well over a half-million illegal border crossings per year.

In a fit of projection, the president also accused his opponents of politicking the issue for partisan advantage: "We've seen a lot of blame and a lot of politics and a lot of ugly rhetoric around immigration."

That too was a distortion for at least two reasons. One, during the 2010 midterm election, the president himself urged Latinos to "punish" their political "enemies." That advice sure seemed like "ugly rhetoric."

And in the El Paso speech, the president rallied his listeners to go lobby for his proposals: "So I'm asking you to add your voices to this debate. You can sign up to help at whitehouse.gov." Whipping up crowds to log onto his website seems just like "the usual Washington games" that Obama deplored in the speech.

The president also deliberately confused legal and illegal immigration in lamenting the inability of highly skilled immigrants to obtain work visas and citizenship opportunities. But polls show wide support for legal immigration based on skill sets, not just on proximity to the border or family ties.

What the president did not dare reveal was that to let in professionals and business people from around the world, based on their skills and earning potential, might also mean to curtail those without education and capital -- in other words, to discourage the millions of illegal immigrants from Mexico who don't speak English or have high school educations, and who often have little means of support but apparent political clout.

Even when the president offered some sensible proposals about illegal aliens paying fines, applying formally for citizenship and learning English, he was still disingenuous. Obama deliberately floated these proposals to his partisan audience without any details of enforcement, since to do so would likely turn off the cheering crowd.

So how exactly would Obama coerce some 11 million illegal aliens into paying a fine, returning to the immigration line to apply legally, or learning English? By threat of deportation or incarceration?

The vast majority of the American public is not racist or "playing politics" in worrying about out-of-control illegal immigration. The enforcement of existing federal immigration law has become a joke. Drug violence in Mexico is destabilizing an entire country and spilling over the border. Jobs are scarce, with unemployment here still at 9 percent. Many billions of dollars in remittances to Mexico leave the American Southwest, often from illegal aliens who rely on American social services to make up the difference.

These are serious issues that deserve more from a president than re-election pandering at the border and bad jokes about alligators and moats.


Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War." You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.

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