VDH and the Litany of Obama Failures

Victor Davis Hanson often writes longish columns over at PJ Media that compile the assorted sins of the Obama Administration.   Today's is a particularly insightful exercise in the genre.   Here are some of the nuggets, but read the whole thing:

• Aside from Obama himself, no one in the post-Benghazi, -AP, -NSA, and -IRS scandal era references the president any longer as the former “professor of constitutional law.” In Obama’s case even the inflated title has become an oxymoron.

 

• When Obama occasionally soars with the old “wind and solar” and “millions of new green jobs” tropes, most associate those references with “Solyndra.” How odd that those in the fracking business — reducing carbon emissions, lowering electricity prices, reducing dependence on foreign energy sources — have done Obama far more political good than his often inept and corrupt friends in the green subsidy racket.

• If a House representative in 2009 had suggested that those in the executive branch should not enforce the employer mandate of the newly passed Obamacare, he would have incurred charges of being disloyal to the Constitution. Now the author of the bill calls it a “train wreck,” and the president chooses not to faithfully execute elements of his own law, his “signature” legislative achievement.... The more vehemently a group in 2009 demanded Obamacare — unions, government employees, pro-Democratic businesses — the more likely they were by 2013 to wish exemption from it.

 

• If anyone were to repeat the Obama reform mantra of 2008 — a new transparency, an end to lobbyists, no more revolving doors — it would incur laughter.

 

• To be a good class warrior also requires the pretense of populism. Ralph Nader and Dennis Kucinich were at least not habitués of Martha’s Vineyard, did not make second homes out of tony golf courses, did not have the family jetting to Aspen and Costa del Sol to take time off with those who forgot when to quit their profiting. How can a president so rail at the 1% and yet so wish to play, vacation, and be among those who didn’t build their wealth?  The president’s signature achievement? He has established a precedent that the president can play all the golf he wishes without being caricatured as a distracted would-be aristocrat.

All great stuff.