The Brief Against Obama

I want to start a series on the Obama presidency, based on The Brief Against Obama, a wonderful book by Hugh Hewitt, a lawyer who clearly lays out the failures of the last four years.

He starts with a reminder of the famous promises Obama made as a candidate. Of course, the biggest was the “Hope and Change” theme. He said the seas would cease their rise. He promised to revive our economy and keep the unemployment below 8 percent. How have these worked out? Easy answer, right?

Hewitt says there are key arguments against Obama. Obamacare was a disaster (and still hated by many Americans), unemployment is far too high, the 2009 stimulus was a total failure, our foreign policy is in shambles, and he has abused the powers of the presidency. Each of these is huge, but Hewitt manages to clarify them in short, punchy chapters.

Let’s start with the foreign mess we now have, thanks to Obama. He snubbed our friends (think of his disgraceful treatment of Israel’s Netanyahu), ignored the Iranian resistance movement, waited for months before calling for Syria’s leader to depart, led from behind in Libya, cut and ran from Iraq, bowed to the Saudi king/Japanese emperor/Chinese president, tried to “reset” relations with the Russians only to be surprised at that country’s nasty behavior (shades of Jimmy Carter), ignored the brutalities and aggressive actions of North Korea, allowed hard-line Islamic fundamentalists to take over in several Arab countries. Each of these deserves a separate essay, but time is short. Obama’s overall problem has been his idea that the United States will gain in world opinion if we look weak, if we appear ashamed of our past policies, if we seem hesitant to defend our values. The result is what anyone would expect—aggressors of the world no longer fear us and are quite willing to go on the offensive against us and our allies.

More next time as we look at domestic failures of Obama. Oh so many of them . . .