Barack Obama has a problem on his hands.
He’s running for re-election and, presumably, over the next nine weeks, will be citing what he sees as his “accomplishments” in his first term.
But, wait a minute.
Isn’t this the guy who told us successful people can’t really claim their own achievements?
Didn’t he suggest that all good things are the result of collective acts of society?
Wasn’t it Obama who proclaimed, “If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that”?
Somehow I suspect those words are going to come back to haunt him in the next two months.
He claims to have extended Medicare for another decade. Now, personally, even if that turns out to be true, we won’t know for 10 years and I don’t consider that to be an accomplishment. But, nevertheless, how does one man do that? After all, he’s not even telling you about something he did. He’s telling you about something his actions in the last four years are going to do at some point in the future. Yet he won’t give an entrepreneur credit for building his own business in the past?
He claims to have made the decisive call to get Osama bin Laden. For starters, we now know Obama had several opportunities to order that raid and passed on them at the advice of Valerie Jarrett. But, did Obama personally go to Pakistan and shoot bin Laden between the eyes? Of course not. So how does he claim this as an accomplishment?
He claims to have given Americans something they never had before – a national health-care program. But this is the most ludicrous claim of all, because Obama did not produce any of the resources necessary to create and sustain Obamacare. Those will be coerced from every single American. What kind of accomplishment is that?
So, unless Obama is going to run the remainder of his re-election campaign praising everyone else in America for his “accomplishments,” he’s got a real problem on his hands.
And I would suggest that his opponents remember that in every single debate this fall.
Let Obama make one claim about something positive he’s done – and all they have to say in response is: “Wait a minute! You didn’t build that.”
Obama does, however, have one thing working in his favor, should he dare claim accomplishments in his bid for re-election. At least half of Americans don’t want any credit for anything he’s done. They want all the blame to rest with Obama.
But this is a serious question.
How does Obama claim achievements for himself when he denies them for hard-working men and women who have toiled for years, sweated through lean times, struggled to make payrolls, wrestled with government regulations and red tape and put in long hours building a simple family business?
If those men and women are entitled to feel a sense of pride for what they have built, how can one man directing the spending of trillions of dollars of other people’s money and the biggest permanent bureaucracy in the world claim credit for anything he’s done?
He certainly didn’t achieve the principle goals he set for his administration – like reducing the deficit, creating more jobs and improving the economy.
So what is he going to say?
Well, we already have the answer. He’s going to attack his opponents viciously, savagely and falsely – apparently claiming that they will do an even worse job than he has done.
How can someone win re-election to the presidency like that?
I don’t think he can, if his opponents simply keep reminding Americans that Obama says none of them have ever accomplished anything on their own.
