Setting Obama free

kw: governance, politics, president

There are at present in the United States of America ten truly free persons, where yesterday there were nine. Who are the nine? The Supreme Court Justices: once appointed they serve for life or as long as health allows. Once appointed they are free of party influence or indeed any influence besides their own conscience.

The tenth is President Barack H. Obama, who never again has to campaign for President, who has a bit more than four years to do just about whatever he likes, free of the need to pander to any constituency, and if you think the divided Congress might cramp his style, you haven't been paying attention to his use of Executive Orders. He has already shown great readiness to sidestep the Constitution and the constraints of Congress. While President G.W. Bush actually signed more EO's during his first term than B.H. Obama has, none had the import of Obama's "Can't wait" initiatives.

Whether he uses these purported executive powers more or less in his second term, we principally want to watch what it is he tries to do, or writes EO's to accomplish. Now his true heart can come out, if any of it has been hidden during his first term. Does he really want to turn America into a Socialist state? Now's his chance to try. If he doesn't do so, or go far in that direction, it will only be because that is not what he wants. Does he really want to make an unbreakable majority of U.S. residents so beholden to Government that they would never dare to vote against a Democrat? Here is his chance. He's a Lame Duck. He's free.

I kinda hope something else is going on inside that skull of his. I noticed during the second and third debates that he really seems to have learned a few things during the past four years. He may have had a little sense knocked into his formerly ultra-liberal head. I think by now he has learned, at least a tiny bit, why certain conservative principles (such as personal responsibility, and self-respect in preference to empty "self esteem") resonate with a genuine majority of Americans.

It is said, "He who hopes for nothing cannot be disappointed." Regardless, I dare to hope. At the very least it feels better than despair.