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You Go First…! No, You Go First ..!
By Lafe Tolliver, Esq
Guest Column
Well, I am going first. I am going to jump into the
roiling waters of saying that President Obama is hanging on
a jagged political cliff and unless and until he changes his
stratagems, he will be a one term wonder.
I know…I know. It has only been a little over a year and
I know what a whopping federal deficit he inherited from
George W., but the fact remains that you can not simply
govern in the same mode as you campaigned.
Those are two entirely different sets of math problems.
One is basic math wherein you
add and subtract and do short division with some aplomb. The
other is theoretical – Boolean Algebra wherein there are no
place markers and x equals y but only when three is less
than two. Get it? Obama apparently doesn’t.
In campaign mode, and especially in light of the fiascos
that George W., placed us in including a costly and
unpopular war in Iraq, a presidential contender has the
luxury to
pontificate about his greatness and to excoriate the
excesses and ignorance of the prior administration.
All of this is done to the melodies of the fusion group
The Black Eyed Peas and everyone feels wonderful about Obama
and how he is going to bring us all back from the brink of
morbid distrust in government and we were to have halcyon
moments with each other.
Only problem is that Obama started believing his own Yes
We Can! hype and thought that it was a transferable concept
to the White House and beyond.
No one told Obama that Yes We Can! does not translate
into achievable foreign policy
wins and does not reopen closed factory sites in Peoria,
Illinois or Flint, Michigan.
No one seemingly took the time to sit down with Obama
and tell him that the sour and
recalcitrant Republicans or the right wing media machine led
by Limbaugh, Fox News and Glenn Beck did not give a “wit or
a bit” about the grand story of his white mother and African
father and he being a community organizer who was able to
strive and rise to reach the White House.
There was no lectures given to him that since he ran as
a populist, you can not get to the White House and start
cooing to fatcat Wall Street bankers who gave you big bucks
but then, on the other hand, you want to eviscerate their
obscene bonuses.
Where was the reality check team to tell him that he was
not on the proverbial Harvard Yard talking to second year
constitutional law students about the vagaries of the
Bill of Rights or the arcane language of the Commerce Clause
and his high-falooting words would fall flat on the average
working stiff who seemingly liked his beer straight and with
no dictionary.
No, the fundamentals that were needed to be addressed
during the first week of his
now faltering administration was a four-letter word: JOBS.
Where was the insider
advice that the loud mantra should have been: “It Is The
Economy Stupid!”?
Great speaker? Perhaps. Nice guy? Sure. The kind of guy
that you would want to spend an evening bowling with and
then splitting a Chicago deep dish pizza? Why not.
But the hammering question still is and yet to be
answered is: Did Obama get in over his head or is he the
victim of a personality cult that will not let him get out
of the magical but insulated political Land of Oz?
Does Obama want to return home to Kansas and fight a
good fight or is the wicked witch of the east (his closet
and closest advisers) telling him that all he has to do is
click his Florsheim shoes, continue to follow that yellow
brick road and all will be fine?
Congress seems broken and the public polls are using
brass knuckles on this president.
Harry Reid looks pitiful and tired and Nancy Pelosi seems
lost in space.
What’s a mother to do? Simple. You reassess and change
directions and use your
built in PR machine as a bully pulpit to spell it out to the
anxious and down beaten public.
You make drastic changes in the personalities that feed
you what is what and you shake up your personal staff so
that you have people who have the temerity to say you are
wrong and here is why.
You go on the offensive with carefully crafted media
promos that will pre-empt the
gibberish of the Fox Media haters so that you tell your
story, your way and not wait to
have to clean it up after Ann Coulter or Michelle Malkin
have mauled it beyond recognition.
You review your public speeches and excise all of those
“whaddiya mean by that”
statements and talk straight and quit believing that you are
anointed with the wisdom of Solomon insofar as long as you
said it, it will magically happen or cure the malady at
hand.
Obama will need to take off the cuff links and fur
lined gloves and take some of his
political thorns in his side to the woodshed and read them
the riot act and let matters fall where they may.
President Bill Clinton was an astute political maven
who had to reinvent himself in order to right the ship and
win a second term. Obama needs to huddle with Bill and get
the dope on how to get a second mortgage on hope and change.
Once Obama has been irretrievably labeled as a darling
caricature who can only give pompous but nice-sounding
speeches but alas, there is no fire in the belly to use a
lead pipe on fat cat bankers, or a soulless health care CEO,
the die is cast and the vultures will swoop in for the final
pickings.
Obama has a political opportunity window time of
approximately another year to silence the pundits and to
show his now disenchanted Democratic and independent voters
that he was not a fluke or a mirage but is the real deal
that they greedily voted for.
If not, then look to the political stage right and hear
the footsteps of the thundering Republican elephant that
will be coming to graze on Obama taters and his tattered
dreams of Yes We Can! becoming…No We Didn’t!
Lafe Tolliver may be contacted at
tolliver@Juno.com
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