Although he's 48-years-old President Obama is, in many ways, still just a lost boy. He seeks to live, not in the real world, but in a utopia. His insistence on living in this world -- though it may appear attractive to the uneducated, neglected and naive -- is dangerous and impacts every American.
As the first pundit in America to predict Mr. Obama's political rise and electoral success, it is with great regret that I say the following: President Obama is not a strong leader. His willingness to cede most of his domestic agenda to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has cost him dearly in his first year. And his unwillingness to admit that the world is at a crossroads is a demonstration of his paralysis as a leader on the most important questions of our time.
His rejection by the International Olympic Committee last week in Copenhagen was a stinging rebuke. And it confirmed not only his global impotence but also his inability to successfully push through projects he supports. It also revealed that the president has been relying on nothing more than his personality to win the day.
President Obama believes his good press far too often, relies too much on support from his trusted advisers -- instead of being open to genuine critical analysis -- and seems to feel that the American people are too "unevolved" to understand his political message and methods. All of these realities are just pushing the president further into an altered state. They're shaping his worldview and it's having a disastrous impact on the lives of average Americans.
Take the latest jobs report, for example. The report finds that the American people are suffering under an unemployment rate that is almost at 10 percent. And that's not all --the more realistic, unofficial unemployment rate puts the figure at about 17 percent. Why? Because many Americans have simply stopped looking for a job. A proven strategy to grow the economy and jump start a hiring trend would be to keep tax incentives for small business from disappearing in 2010. And the president shouldn't stop there he should add to them and allow the free market to work its magic. Working to expand a robust economy is the only answer to serious unemployment. But the president seems to believe that if he just has the right czar, in the right position, then job losses can be controlled. In the president's utopia, employment and the number of jobs available are fixed and finite, and "saving them" is better than or, at minimum, equal to "creating them."
Then there's health care. New poll numbers from Rasmussen find that the majority of the American people support health care reform but they do not, under any circumstances, support a government controlled "public option" -- or takeover -- of the industry. But President Obama doesn't seem to grasp the expressed will of the people who elected him. In the president's utopia it is *doctors,* not trial lawyers, that are being selfish and charging people for procedures they don't need just to "make a buck." In the world you and I live in, we know that doctors run the risk of a massive lawsuit every time they deliver bad news to a patient.
In Afghanistan, President Obama has deliberated for over a month about about whether to expand our footprint there by no more than 40,000 troops. While the military commanders he put in place to do the job beg him for more troops 43 more soldiers have died. Mr. Obama met with General McChrystal for less than an hour on Air Force One when he was in Copenhagen (but for only the second time since commissioning McChrystal to the theater), while Vice President Biden continues to whisper in his ear that things in the region are not working. In President Obama's utopia he wishes that war did not exist, but he has yet to realize that the threat from not dealing with it could be the worst scenario of all.
On Iran, President Obama has issued a stern assessment of the rogue nation's nuclear ambitions. In President Obama's utopia, stern words should be enough. They should cause a reasonable world leader to be so concerned that they will pick up the phone and iron out the differences by the afternoon. Yet even after the IAEA's meetings on Iran, even after the president issued another stern deadline, the administration has begun to backtrack. In President Obama's utopia, the United States is not superior to other nations. That's why we are powerless when we try to suggest what they should do. In fact, in President Obama's utopia, if we simply give up our weapons he believes the bad guys will give up theirs.
When it comes to the economy, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" sounds good. In a perfect world, such purity of goodness would be a place where we'd all like to live. But it would also be a place no one on this planet would recognize. In President Obama's utopia, the socialists and the communists DO have it right. Maybe this is why, in his memoirs, the president writes about how delighted he was to hang out with them in college. But the depravity of the human race has always been -- and will always be -- the fatal flaw in socialist and communist theory.
Finally, there is America's image in the world. In President Obama's utopia he is fine with the idea of "American Exceptionalism" being challenged or even turned upside down. Yet in reality no country has suffered more loss of its own, for the welfare of others, in history. To Obama, an America that stands tall in contrast to others seems arrogant. To our enemies, an America that seems ashamed of herself seems weak.
President Obama is not a strong decision maker -- most law professors aren't. They are too accustomed to arguing issues from all sides. The president is also a man who envisions a world that will never exist. It is his inability to recognize this flawed vision that makes our country more vulnerable, more hopeless and one with a bleak future, at least in the short run. It is, in a word, dangerous.
Kevin McCullough is the nationally syndicated host of "'Baldwin/McCullough Radio" now heard on 197 stations and columnist based in New York. He blogs at www.muscleheadrevolution.com. His second book "The Kind Of MAN Every Man SHOULD Be" is in stores now.
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