Martin: The Failed Presidency of Barack Obama

MANCHESTER, NH — As you know, I worked hard to elect Donald Trump. We came close to winning New Hampshire for Trump. I’ll have lots more to say about Donald in the days ahead. But today belongs to Barack (Barry) Hussein Obama.

Barack Obama, the failed president.

Thirteen (13!) years ago I became the first analyst to expose Obama as a fraud, please see link #1 below. Ten (10!) years ago I published “Obama Week,” a series of columns exposing Obama, and predicted he would be a failed president if he won the White House. Those columns later became the first book to present an unvarnished view of Obama, please see link #2 below. In 2008 I became the first independent researcher and analyst to investigate Obama’s family history in Hawai’i and called Obama “the greatest entertainer in the world.”

Was he ever.

Obama was a feel-good entertainer. He made us feel good about ourselves because he felt good about himself, worshipped himself really. Amazingly, he made it to the White House despite a total lack of professional accomplishments and leadership experience. Obama was all about himself. Obama promised grand dreams and great works but ultimately, like the “King of Kings” Ozymandias in the poem by Shelley, Obama was and will always be a failed president. But Obama didn’t fail us in his mind. We failed him.

One of the greatest lines in cinema is Brando’s “I couda been a contendah” in "On The Waterfront," please see link #3 below. But like the failed boxer who got a “one way ticket to Palookaville,” Obama is now on the way to his own eternal Palookaville where Obama will preach great sermons about his accomplishments to an empty house.

Obama says he is going to continue to lead, comment and rally Democrats. Just tell that to Sen. Chuck Schumer and other ambitious politicians. The day Obama leaves the White House he will be through. He’ll still be a big draw in Hollywood and the liberal salons from coast to coast, the same way Bill Clinton endures as a shadow of his former self. But Obama’s legacy will turn to dust and be consumed by desert sand.

Why did he fail?

I was probably Obama’s first antagonist and first analyst, because I had a unique position from which to observe him. In a few weeks I will celebrate forty years (count’em) since I led reform in the City of Chicago, and I’m the last living mayoral candidate that fought to liberate the city in 1977 after the death of the first Mayor Daley. Fifty years ago as a young law student I began to fight corruption in Illinoispolitics. Today the grandchildren of some of the thugs I helped send to jail are budding political crooks. Chicago was once called a “city in chains” by Ovid Demaris. Sadly, even in the present the city is still chained to its past.

Long ago, I moved back to New Hampshire, where my family had settled over 100 years ago. But I still visit Chicago and still have great affection for the place.

Obama was a product of Chicago politics though he would deny the fact. He came from the liberal precincts of Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, where I often have lunch with friends when I visit the city. He played by “Machine” rules although he was not himself part of the political Machine. And he once ran an honest campaign, for the U. S. Senate in 2004. I know; I was there.

Obama and I originally go back to the 1990s when he was a newly-elected state senator in Springfield. I saw his “game,” and he had great moves. In his early years he learned from his mistakes and he always cultivated wealthy patrons who were enchanted by his charms as an entertainer. No one has ever gone as far with so little in American politics. But Obama never became a “contendah” once he reached the Oval Office. On the contrary. he devastated the Democratic Party that elected him. He endangered national security. And he is given “credit” for giving rise to Donald Trump as his successor.

On the surface, Obama and Trump could not be more different. But I suspect that internally they are more alike than they would care to admit. Just as Obama almost single-handedly won the White House through his undeniable charms, Trump similarly won the White House when almost everyone but he believed that his campaign was a lost cause. In their own ways, both men exhibited the true grit that can lead to greatness, or abject failure.

Honestly, I can’t believe that we are only days, hours really, from what I believe will be an ignominious end to Obama. As noted, he will still be welcome in celebrity precincts but his role as a Democratic party leader will end abruptly and abjectly. Senator Bernie Sanders has more of a political future than Obama.

I have known Trump since the 1970s. And early last year in one of my “letters” I admonished him not to betray his supporters. He didn’t. He won an unwinnable race.

Sadly for his liberal supporters, Obama did betray his followers. He promised but didn’t deliver. In his speech Tuesday he called out the South Side of Chicago, the killing fields of the South Side where an African-American genocide is being perpetrated by African-Americans on African-Americans. Obama polarized the nation like no one before him in the past fifty years. Now he claims we are a divided nation and our democracy is fragile. But who divided us? Obama.

Obama’s life has been a remarkable odyssey, from the child of a somewhat unstable mother, through being the protégé of communist Frank Marshall Davis, very probably his biological father, to the machinations of Chicago politics and finally to the Oval Office. But legacy? I don’t think Obama will have much of one. Dismantling his executive orders and abuses of presidential power will not take long. Erasing his “legacy” will be a matter of weeks and maybe months, not years.

Obamacare? Unwinding that mess will not be easy and may take longer. Obamacare, moreover, will be the great example of why he was/is a failed president.

Over the decades both parties had failed to deal with failings in our health care system, largely due to the enormity of the challenges. Republicans failed and Democrats failed. Many attempted but no one succeeded in reaching the mountaintop. Until Obama.

And he could have built a legacy that endured for the ages. Sadly, due to his own character flaws, he didn’t. Obama wanted to show his opponents he was in control, that he had defeated them. And in the process he defeated himself.

If Obama had thrown Republican a few bones, such as intestate sales of insurance, health savings accounts and a few other harmless provisions, and trimmed some of the managerial excesses of his health plan, he could have enacted almost all of his agenda with Republican support. Instead he froze Republicans out, and the American People then froze Obama out. Obama snatched defeat from the jaws of victory while still proclaiming he had “won” when in reality he had lost badly. He betrayed his supporters and energized his opponents. So what could have been a massive success ultimately turned into an utter failure due to the president’s overweening ego and insufferable triumphalism.

So, yes, Obama “couda been a “contendah.” But ultimately, he wrote his own ticket to Palookaville. That will be his enduring legacy. Because the two men are so similar in many personality traits hopefully Obama’s failure will be a warning to Trump.

LINKS TO THIS STORY (cut and paste the entire link below and not just the underlined portion):

[1] freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1189687/posts

[2] orangestatepress.com

[3] youtube.com/watch?v=uBiewQrpBBA

New citations after emailing:

Andy Martin is an author and former Democrat and Republican candidate for various political offices.