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A Weak President |
No one likes a weak president.
I'm speaking in political science terms, which I learned in seventh grade, but which may not be understood anymore in this great country, because we treat our schools like unwanted stepchildren. So I'll explain what I mean.
A weak president is a guy who can't push his bills through Congress.
A strong president is a guy who can do that, or who does what he wants whether he can bulldoze Congress or not, and whether it's constitutional or not.
Weak and strong, in this sense, have nothing to do with right or wrong, good or bad.
It's whether the guy in the Oval Office can cram his will down our throats.
Barack Obama is a weak president. So was Jimmy Carter.
FDR was a strong president.
I'm starting a new paragraph here because I will not put George W. Bush in the same paragraph as Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But Bush II was a strong president.
He wreaked his will upon us, and upon Congress, and upon the world.
Barack Obama, despite his sterling qualities as a man, husband, father, writer, and so on, is a weak president, and history will write him down that way.
What I'm talking about, of course, is Syria.
The day President Obama learned that Bashar al Assad had murdered 1,400 of his own citizens with chemical weapons, President Obama should have ordered the Pentagon to drop about six laser-guided missiles on Assad's National Palace, and another dozen missiles on the Syrian Army battalion that did it.
Then he should have refused to comment on it, or denied it - like Putin does in Russia.
Had Obama done that, things in the Middle East would be a lot calmer today. And Obama would be a lot more popular, in this country and around the world.
Assad would be dead, or worried. And he wouldn't do it again.
But Obama, being a weak president, didn't do that.
He asked Congress for permission, and when it looked liked Congress would refuse - for reasons of its own - Obama backed off. Again.
It is obvious why Obama did it, this time, and it is admirable.
It's because ever since LBJ's bogus Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, to which Congress truckled, pulling its forelocks, U.S. presidents have committed our country to wars over and over again without the consent of Congress.
This is unconstitutional, but hey, what's a little Constitution?
President Obama, who is a constitutional scholar, knows this.
So he wants Congress to sign on to our next war.
But Congress, smelling weakness, doesn't want to do that.
They'd do it if Obama were a white man and a Republican, but since he ain't, they won't.
Am I calling the Republican leadership in Congress racists, and traitors who will sell out their country for political advantage?
Sure.
You know that as well as I do.
So. Weak president, strong president - who do we like?
We like the strong ones.
Don't we?
I'm speaking in political science terms, which I learned in seventh grade, but which may not be understood anymore in this great country, because we treat our schools like unwanted stepchildren. So I'll explain what I mean.
A weak president is a guy who can't push his bills through Congress.
A strong president is a guy who can do that, or who does what he wants whether he can bulldoze Congress or not, and whether it's constitutional or not.
Weak and strong, in this sense, have nothing to do with right or wrong, good or bad.
It's whether the guy in the Oval Office can cram his will down our throats.
Barack Obama is a weak president. So was Jimmy Carter.
FDR was a strong president.
I'm starting a new paragraph here because I will not put George W. Bush in the same paragraph as Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But Bush II was a strong president.
He wreaked his will upon us, and upon Congress, and upon the world.
Barack Obama, despite his sterling qualities as a man, husband, father, writer, and so on, is a weak president, and history will write him down that way.
What I'm talking about, of course, is Syria.
The day President Obama learned that Bashar al Assad had murdered 1,400 of his own citizens with chemical weapons, President Obama should have ordered the Pentagon to drop about six laser-guided missiles on Assad's National Palace, and another dozen missiles on the Syrian Army battalion that did it.
Then he should have refused to comment on it, or denied it - like Putin does in Russia.
Had Obama done that, things in the Middle East would be a lot calmer today. And Obama would be a lot more popular, in this country and around the world.
Assad would be dead, or worried. And he wouldn't do it again.
But Obama, being a weak president, didn't do that.
He asked Congress for permission, and when it looked liked Congress would refuse - for reasons of its own - Obama backed off. Again.
It is obvious why Obama did it, this time, and it is admirable.
It's because ever since LBJ's bogus Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, to which Congress truckled, pulling its forelocks, U.S. presidents have committed our country to wars over and over again without the consent of Congress.
This is unconstitutional, but hey, what's a little Constitution?
President Obama, who is a constitutional scholar, knows this.
So he wants Congress to sign on to our next war.
But Congress, smelling weakness, doesn't want to do that.
They'd do it if Obama were a white man and a Republican, but since he ain't, they won't.
Am I calling the Republican leadership in Congress racists, and traitors who will sell out their country for political advantage?
Sure.
You know that as well as I do.
So. Weak president, strong president - who do we like?
We like the strong ones.
Don't we?