October 24, 2012
By: Linda Case Gibbons
He is the beneficiary of a noble history carved out by a noble people. But after Monday’s final Presidential Debate, observers were in agreement in describing him as a bratty kid. On Monday night, facts were President Obama’s worst enemy.
We watched his worlds collide as he was starkly caught in the spotlight of facts and figures. He thought he could get away with anything and for all of his life he had. All he had to do was apply his "formula.”
Avoid direct questioning. If there is a scandal or "bump in the road,” ignore it. If it becomes too big to ignore it, say "our hearts go out to ….we will not rest until …have been brought to justice, yada, yada” and then order an investigation. If they ask for documents, say you gave at the office. If they keep asking, stonewall them. If the scandal is about one of your team, make sure they investigate themselves so it turns out okay.
And so far the formula has worked.
He got away with making Senate recess appointments while the Senate wasn’t in recess; with making unilateral decisions about immigration behind Congress’ back; with empowering his agencies to levy war against small businesses, oil drilling operations, his own states, white Americans, "rich Americans” and anyone else on his enemies’ list.
He got away with flaunting the rule of law when it suited him; ignoring court orders when it suited him; with keeping the job makers in the dark about what taxes loom over their businesses; saddling the country with taxes and penalties with a healthcare law Americans didn’t want; and with buying a car company without asking the American people if they wanted to and then handsomely rewarded auto industry unions with GM stock.
He got away with it until lately.
The first time he didn’t was when he was asked about Fast and Furious on the Spanish speaking TV news station Univision, something the American media knows not to bring up.
In answer, he proceeded to spin, patiently lecturing on the "dumb” things that inevitably happen in American government and how he then makes sure it never happens again and how the U.S. is a part of the problem with its need for Mexican drugs and with its guns flowing to Mexico.
The second, third and fourth time he didn’t get away with it was in the last three Presidential Debates. His lack of knowledge of facts and figures was there for all to see.
He was wrong and outspoken about the horses and bayonets, the U.S. Navy, the threats posed by Iran and Russia and about his "apology tour” being fact-checked as a whopper of a lie, and he delivered his misinformation in a rude, sarcastic, and condescending manner.
"I think Gov. Romney maybe hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works. You mentioned the Navy, for example and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets because the nature of our military’s changed.”
But he was wrong.
The American public was able to see firsthand this president did not know nor did he care to know about national security, information he could have learned from a security briefing, or by meeting with the secretary of the navy. Then he would have known that the Marines still use bayonets and horses were used in Afghanistan.
But he's plain not interested. Instead he and Hillary and his minions were too busy spinning the Libyan crisis out for over a month, fining and refining, never making the situation clearer nor better.
But while this was what our president chose to do, there were two women in the news that put Obama and Hillary and his minions to shame.
Lara Logan chose to step forward to comment on the way this administration has handled both the war in Afghanistan and the attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya.
Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent for CBS News with Afghanistan as her beat, Logan was brutally raped while covering the news during the Arab Spring and felt constrained to speak out about the Obama administration, heedless of adverse consequences to herself.
"I have never missed a year of the Afghan War…and I knew that we were being lied to and the American people were being misled and when it comes to issues that I care about, like issues of national security, I don’t think that politics should dictate your national security policy.”
"There is a narrative coming out of Washington for the last two years. It is driven in part by Taliban apologists, who claim they are just the poor moderate, gentler, kinder Taliban. It’s such nonsense! We have not tamed the Taliban. America’s military might has not tamed Al-Quada. Al-Quada and the Taliban haven’t been vanquished. They’re coming back and they’re strong and they hate us as much as ever.”
This is the same Taliban that hunted down and shot Malala Yousafzai, a 14-year-old Pakistani girl because she refused to let the Taliban tell her she could not have an education.
This is the daughter of a man who himself provided an example of bravery by operating one of the few schools that defied the Taliban by educating girls.
Since age 11, this young girl has been fearless in speaking out about her life and the Taliban, writing a blog for the BBC about how it was to be educated under the threat of death by Islamist extremists. She received Pakistan’s first National Peace Prize for her efforts.
Her very existence made her a threat to the cowards called the Taliban. They shot her in the head and neck, on her way home from school, entering the van that was carrying her home. If she survives, they have vowed to finish her off.
But even after the shooting, even then, parents in the school she attended refused to bend to the threat posed by the Taliban. The Monday afterwards, only six girls out of thirty-one were absent from school.
The Taliban issued a statement, explaining their actions by invoking the same Islam that this administration takes pains to defend.
"Malala was using her tongue and pen against Islam and Muslims, so she was punished for her crime by the blessing of the Almighty Allah.”
If the president wanted to get up to speed on terrorism, the Taliban, and Islam in Pakistan and Afghanistan, he could have learned a lot from these women. But these aren’t the type of women the Democratic Party or the president has in mind when drawing up their party platform.
Lara Logan and Malala Yousafzai represent real women, involved, concerned and knowledgeable about what is going on outside their own bodies. These women know they are more than the sum of their "lady parts” despite what Obama’s campaign ad says, unlike Obama spokesperson, Susan Fluke.
This week a man called into a talk radio show. The father of daughters serving in the military, he said he was heartsick at how the president handled the assassination of Ambassador Stevens, Tyrone Woods, Glen Doherty and Sean Smith.
We have a history in this country, the father said, of never leaving our own behind. Now seeing how this administration has handled Libya, I fear for my daughters’ safety.
Me, too.
Hold the line, America.