A rare point of universal agreement in all this trenchant political acrimony: No matter what you think of Donald Trump, the political environment in which the flashy real estate mogul has so brilliantly thrived was created entirely by President Obama.
This explains the president’s truly bizarre performance during his graduation speech Sunday. The president is angry, he is defensive, he is spending his final months in office hopelessly trying to spin his failed presidency.
“In politics and in life, ignorance is not a virtue,” he said in a speech that was otherwise peppered with obvious references to Mr. Trump, who is already basically running against Mr. Obama’s third term, whoever the Democratic nominee will be.
“It’s not cool to not know what you are talking about,” he told the easy crowd. “That’s not keeping it real or telling it like it is, that’s not challenging political correctness. That’s just not knowing what you’re talking about.”
I’m sorry, what is the president talking about? His policy in Libya? His handling of the “JV” team that makes up the Islamic State terrorist group today? His cowardly mishandling of race relations in America? Or is he talking about his disastrously failed health care program? His hollow border policy that has — literally — killed innocent American citizens?
“Facts, evidence, reason, logic, an understanding of science — these are good things,” the president told graduating students. “We traditionally have valued those things. But if you were listening to today’s political debate, you might wonder where this strain of anti-intellectualism came from.”
Hmmm. I wonder where our burning disdain for pseudo-intellectualism came from? Perhaps from eight years of doom, disgrace and recession at the hands of a know-nothing president whose only credentials seemed to be that had worked as a community organizer and was a constitutional law professor — and a terrible one at that, based on his record with the Supreme Court.
Anyway, Plato, what were the “facts, evidence, reason, logic and understanding of science” that you ran on in your first campaign for the presidency?
Hope and change? That ain’t reason, logic or science.
Name one single metric by which President Obama has been a success.
Take, for instance, his promise to end the wars in the Middle East.
The only reason he was elected president in 2008 is for a vote in the U.S. Senate that he didn’t even have to take.
Hillary Clinton (remember her?) was marching to her certain coronation. The only thing between her and the crown was an inexperienced, first-term senator with a funny African Muslim name. But he was struggling in the single digits. According to polls, Sen. Barack Obama wasn’t beating Mrs. Clinton even among black voters.
Then came the assault on Hillary Clinton for voting to go to war in Iraq. That message resonated, particularly among young voters.
It was Mr. Obama’s anti-war “credentials” — i.e., zero experience and not even voting on the matter — that gave him credibility among Democratic voters around the country. Only after winning those largely white voters did black Democrats start believing Mr. Obama was the real deal and get behind him.
That 2008 Obama campaign remains the most anti-war platform in American history to ever succeed into the White House. It won him the nomination and certainly did not hurt him in the general election.
Now this: The New York Times reports that President Obama has become the first commander in chief in U.S. history to serve nearly two complete terms at war. He has officially surpassed even warmongering former President George W. Bush.
He came in on false promises of peace and leaves with more blood on his hands than any prior president.
No wonder he is lashing out.
Charles Hurt can be reached at charleshurt@live.com. Follow him on Twitter via @charleshurt.
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