The Coming Resignation
of Barack Obama
The American Spectator "The
Coming Resignation of Barack Obama" (Interesting commentary, to say
the least!)
The Coming Resignation of Barack Obama
By Peter Ferrara on 6.2.10 @ 6:09AM
Months ago, I predicted in this column that President Obama would so
discredit himself in office that he wouldn't even be on the ballot
in 2012, let alone have a prayer of being reelected. Like President
Johnson in 1968, who had won a much bigger victory four years
previously than Obama did in 2008, President Obama will be so
politically defunct by 2012 that he won't even try to run for
reelection.
I am now ready to predict that President Obama will not even make it
that far. I predict that he will resign in discredited disgrace
before the fall of 2012. Like my previous prediction, that is based
not just on where we are now, but where we are going under his
misleadership.
Is the President Above the Law?
Watergate was supposed to have established that Presidents are not
above the law. If that is so, President Obama may have to resign for
breaking the law in the Sestak affair.
Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) is now the Democrat nominee for the Senate
seat held far too long by Arlen Specter. President Obama induced
Specter to switch parties and give the Democrats their very
temporary, 60 vote, filibuster-proof majority, in return for
endorsing him for reelection and promising him no opposition in the
Democrat primary. But Sestak
had already announced that he was running for the seat, and he
refused to get out. Two week ago, Sestak defeated the unprincipled,
opportunistic Specter for the Democrat nomination, continuing the
perfect string of everyone who Obama endorses and campaigns for
going down to defeat.
For months now, Sestak has publicly claimed that President Obama
tried to keep his promise to Specter by offering him a high-ranking
administration appointment if he would get out of the race. The
rumor is that Sestak, formerly an Admiral, was offered appointment
as Secretary of the Navy. The problem is that a federal statute
explicitly provides that it is a federal felony, punishable by up to
one year in prison, to attempt to bribe a candidate with a federal
job, or anything of value, to influence an election.
As Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) has indicated, the White House is now
engaged in a coverup that is only making matters worse. Former
President Bill Clinton is now claiming that he carried the
offer to Sestak of an appointment to an unpaid position on a
Presidential Advisory Board in return for dropping out of the race.
But that story is not plausible because as a sitting member of
Congress he could not have legally served on such a Presidential
Board. So is the White House now lying to the American people about
the matter?
Moreover, indirectly offering the job through former President
Clinton still violates the statute, as does the offer of an unpaid
position. That is why Issa, Mark Levin, and others are saying
that what the White House is publicly admitting still amounts to a
federal crime, which is an impeachable offense. Democrats are going
to have to decide if they really believe that presidents are not
above the law. Presently, one reason to vote Republican for
president is that Republican presidents are subject to the rule of
law, but Democrat presidents are not.
Misfeasance or Malfeasance?
But the Sestak affair is just the early breeze of the gathering
political storm that threatens to envelop President Obama. A
mysterious explosion over six weeks ago in a deep sea oil well a
mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico continues
to gush oil to this day, heading for Gulf beaches and fisheries. The
White House says the President held a meeting on it in the Oval
Office on Day One. But we have not heard a word on what was done in
that meeting 44 days ago, other than develop political talking
points.
Democrat talking head Kirsten Powers, writing in the New York Post
on May 27, explained what should have been done: "Turns out the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration back in 1994 drafted
plans for responding to a major Gulf oil spill, a response called
'In Situ Burn.'...The idea was to use barriers called 'fire booms'
to collect and contain the spill at sea -- and then burn it off."
Powers cites former federal oil spill response coordinator Ron
Gourget as believing "this could have captured 95 percent of the oil
from the spill." But, Powers writes, "the Administration's chief
response so far was to send out Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to do
his best impersonation of a totalitarian thug, proclaiming that the
government would 'have its boot on the throat of BP.'"
It is too late for the fire boom plan now, with the oil spreading
across the Gulf. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal quickly developed another plan to build
temporary sand barrier islands off the coasts to absorb the oil and
protect fragile wetlands and fisheries. The law requires federal
approval for such activity. But perhaps because Jindal is a
Republican, the hyperpartisan Obama Administration has failed to
even respond to his proposal first made a month ago, except to say
that it is studying the idea, while the oil starts to wash ashore.
What President Obama has done instead is to suspend all offshore
drilling in the Arctic, at least
until the causes and solutions to the Gulf spill are discovered. No
applications for drilling permits in the Arctic will even
be considered now until 2011. Drilling scheduled to begin this
summer under already issued Alaskan leases has also been halted.
Investor's Business Daily explains how this punishes the American
people, saying on May 28, "Alaska's Chukchi Sea holds more oil and gas
than anyone thought - 1,600 trillion cubic feet of undeveloped
natural gas, or 30% of the world's supply, and 83 billion barrels of
undeveloped oil, 4% of estimated global resources. You can be sure
the Russians won't be as reluctant." Nor will the Cubans and their
Chinese partners expected to drill in the Gulf of Mexico off of Florida's coasts as well, just as the Brits
and others have not been reluctant to drill in the stormy North Sea.
Moreover, President Obama has already begun to use the crisis to
renew his political push for federal cap and tax legislation that
will cripple the economy with arbitrary, unnecessary, soaring,
energy cost increases. Does he plan to hold any future drilling
hostage to passage
of this legislation?
In the response to Hurricane Katrina, federal law specifically
provided that the then Democrat Governor of Louisiana and Mayor of
New Orleans were in charge. The federal and FEMA role was to
"support...state and local assistance efforts" with the necessary,
primarily financial resources. Nevertheless, in the days after the
hurricane, President Bush's federal government was the only
functioning authority, as the Coast Guard rescued 30,000 people off
of rooftops. Hundreds of school buses that could have been used to
whisk those people out of harm's way were left ruined under water
due to Mayor Nagin's inaction in response to federal hurricane
warnings. The partisan Governor acted only to deny and delay
President Bush's control over the state's national guard for
political reasons.
But the Gulf oil spill emanates from federal waters, which means
President Obama is directly in charge, not state and local
officials. And his derelictions are losing his own supporters.
Democrat Powers writes, "If he promised us anything, Obama promised
us competence. Instead, we've gotten the Keystone Cops." As Peggy
Noonan said of the
Democrats in last weekend's Wall Street Journal, "In time -- after
the 2010 elections go badly -- they are going to start to peel off.
The political operative James Carville, the most vocal and
influential of the President's Gulf critics, signaled to Democrats
this week that they can start to peel off. He did it through the
passion of his denunciations." Therein lies the beginning of the
end.
That end will be greatly accelerated if any email, document, or
other serious evidence turns up indicating that President Obama or
his cronies delayed the federal response in any way because they
thought the spreading spill would advance their political agenda. Or
if any evidence arises that Obama failed to respond to Jindal for
partisan political reasons.
Geometric Downward Spiral
Moreover, all of this is just what's happening now. What leads me to
predict President Obama's early political demise are his numerous,
enormous vulnerabilities to further adverse developments,
threatening a geometrically accelerating downward spiral, for him
politically, and for America substantively.
Now and for the next six months, we will be enjoying the high point of
the Obama economy, the tippy top of the Obamanomics, Keynesian,
roller coaster. If Art Laffer's Coming Crash of 2011 arrives next
year, or if the economy just dips into another downturn, President
Obama no longer enjoys the political base to survive it. With
African Americans suffering Depression-level unemployment for over a
year now, even that most solid of all political bases will weaken
and waver in the face of a renewed downturn.
Under the President's leadership, Congressional Democrats continue
to pile more and more taxes on the investment necessary to create
jobs and prosperity, "the most punitive tax rates on investment
income since the late 1970s," as The Wall Street Journal reported on
May 27. Even before Obama and the New Left takeover of Washington, the top 1%
of taxpayers were already paying more in income taxes than the
bottom 95% combined, as the Tax Foundation has accurately reported
based on official IRS data. But this is not enough for the
Obamunistas, who are justifying still higher taxes saying the rich
must pay their "fair share," sort of like the last of the Romanov
family had to pay their fair share.
This punitive tax piracy is already starting to cause capital flight
from the U.S., which will accelerate
into an outright capital jail break from America next
year. That will only hasten a renewed downturn, cripple job
creation, and restore rising unemployment. The American people will
not endure mismanagement of the now two-year-old financial crisis
into an extended depression.
Moreover, with the federal deficit already at a record smashing $1.6
trillion this year, a renewed recession next year will only cause it
to soar further. How long can that go on before we arrive at Greece,
where the markets refuse to buy the bonds necessary to finance the
deficit, at least without soaring interest rates, which would only
cause further economic decline.
Meanwhile, the Fed has long been busily creating new economic
bubbles with its overly extended easy money and zero interest rate
policies. Monetary policies so loose that they should be considered
pornographic are creating new vulnerabilities for the President,
which will arise as sudden surprises involving new dollar, interest
rate or inflation scares. When the Fed finally decides it must pull
back, it has laid the foundation for the bubbles to burst again,
further inspiring economic downturn. Gold is already higher than the
S&P 500. That is a blaring warning sign of trouble ahead.
Another blind spot for the President is energy policy itself. Those
opposed to further offshore drilling need to end their hypocrisy and
stop using the remaining oil and gas still available to the rest of
us. Cap and tax is one of the biggest economic and political
blunders in history just waiting to happen, a greater potential
party builder for the Republicans than Abraham Lincoln and Teddy
Roosevelt combined. The American people for once will be unified in
coming together to get Democrats out of office so that the obvious,
huge, fat, unnecessary, cap and tax cost sitting on top of the
American economy can be removed. As the price of gas climbs over $4
a gallon due to that and to President Obama's anti-production
policies, the public riot demanding immediate change in leadership
will surprise establishment Washington.
Adding to all of this are the grave vulnerabilities posed by Iran successfully
developing nuclear weapons, and President Obama's foreign policy
weaknesses generally, which just invite war. Devilishly pursuing the
opposite of every one of Reagan's policies, instead of
Peace Through Strength, Obama is inviting War Through Weakness. If Iran launches a bloody
attack on Israel,
open calls for his resignation will be widespread. If Iran uses
a nuclear weapon in that attack, or in any other attack against
American interests, the Obama Administration will be over
politically.
The President himself has laid the foundation for his biggest
political vulnerability of all. He won our votes and the election in
2008 with "the firm pledge" not to raise taxes "in any form" on
anyone making less than $250,000 a year. Now he has already backed
away from that pledge to the American people by creating a
Presidential Deficit Commission, with "everything on the table,"
including tax increases on working people in direct violation of the
pledge. The much discussed Value Added Tax (VAT) could not be a more
direct violation of the no tax increase pledge, increasing the
prices of everything working families buy.
When the President directly violates the pledge that got him elected
by openly endorsing such a tax increase, his resignation will
immediately become a central political issue. The above problems and
vulnerabilities will come together to increase the pressure for
resignation to unbearable levels.
As Peggy Noonan suggested, the key will be the Democrats themselves
(though she has never said a word about possible resignation). After
suffering grievous losses in this year's elections, they will have
limited tolerance for the above described political pressures and
chaos. With the very survival of their party at stake, the Democrats
will buckle and desert President Obama, joining the calls for his
resignation. At that point, with zero prospects for reelection, and
unable to govern effectively, he will resign.
Peter Ferrara is director of entitlement and budget policy at the
Institute for Policy Innovation, a policy advisor to the Heartland
Institute, and general counsel of the American Civil Rights Union.
He served in the White House Office of Policy Development under
President Reagan, and as Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United
States under
the first President Bush. He is a graduate
ofHarvard College and Harvard
Law School.
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