The job of President of the United States is one that every occupant until Barack Obama has taken seriously. Every President prior to Barack Obama understood that the job entailed things like holding press conferences, meeting with members of Congress to compromise on budget issues, and learning the latest news about economic and international developments from the nation’s best experts.
These things matter, because the President of the United States must be intellectually prepared to make important decisions about the future of our country. But President Obama has focused on the celebrity aspects of his job and neglected doing much of anything that involved actual work. He’s spent plenty of time on the golf course (more than 100 rounds in three and a half years), raising money (163 fundraisers and counting), giving campaign speeches, vacationing, and playing basketball.
Last month, ABC News spelled out the gory details of just how much time President Obama has spent raising money:
In the first 12 days of June, Obama has attended 21 fundraising events. All told, he has now attended 163 re-election fundraisers for his campaign and the Democratic Party – almost double the number George W. Bush attended in his entire first term (86) and more than any other president in history.
But as for the real work of the job, President Obama has been a no-show.
Consider this evidence:
He’s not received an economic briefing in over a year–since April of 2011.
He’s held only three full press conferences since last June.
He’s spent no time whatsoever meeting with members of Congress on budget matters. In fact, in his administration, almost every statutorily required budget submission has been late.
In the last six months, he’s not met once with his jobs council.
Almost four years after the American people elected him to hold the office of President, a growing number of Americans are coming to a stark conclusion. Barack Obama is not serious enough about the job to be worthy of it.
Michael Patrick Leahy is a Breitbart News contributor, Editor of Broadside Books’ Voices of the Tea Party e-book series, and author of Covenant of Liberty: The Ideological Origins of the Tea Party Movement.