Poor President Obama! Everyone is so mean to him!
Please.
Obama's recent rant in Minneapolis - at what was supposed to be some sort of family picnic - was quite the classic for him. On and on he went, justifying his use of executive orders to do things for which the Constitution requires him to seek congressional approval, because "the middle class" can't wait or something.
You see, Obama wouldn't have to abuse his authority if these horrible Republicans would just give him everything he wants. But the problem is what he wants. He whines that they won't pass an increase in the minimum wage, but he conveniently overlooks the fact that you destroy jobs when you arbitrarily add to the cost of labor. He moans that they won't pass "fair pay," but of course he can offer no explanation for what that even means, let alone how the federal government is supposed to make it happen in a relationship between private employers and private employees. He whimpers that they refused to extend unemployment benefits - after it was extended many times for many years - without mentioning that it's only designed to last for 26 weeks and that the constant extensions have turned it into a source of long-term dependency.
And when it comes right down it, Obama's problem is not so much with Congress as it is with the American people and with the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution gave the people the right to throw out a certain congressional majority and put in a new one. They did so in November 2010, in reaction to ill-conceived Obama policies like ObamaCare and the massive spending blowout he labeled a "stimulus" (which stimulated nothing but more debt).
Dumb voters! How could they do this to the poor president?
Obama may think his policies are wonderful, but the voters disagreed to the extent that they were no longer willing to give him a House majority to rubber stamp everything he wanted to do. What a drag this has been for our poor, beleaguered president! He's gone from having massive Democrat majorities in his first two years in office - which would give him anything he wanted - to now having to deal with a Republican House that, as he likes to say, chooses to "mess with him."
Dumb voters! How could they do this to the poor president?
Maybe someone should explain to the president (who was supposedly a "constitutional law professor" at one point) that the Founders actually designed the federal government to work this way. That whole "checks and balances" thing. Constitutional Law Professor Obama doesn't think there should be any checks on his authority, and when Congress imposes such checks regardless, Obama's response is to take executive action for which he has no authority because "the middle class can't wait" or something.
Oh, and to ruin people's picnics by showing up and whining about it.
I guess this is what you get when you elect a president based mostly on the celebrity status of the individual running, which is exactly what happened when Obama was elected in 2008. It was all about his so-called star power then, and it's still all about him today. At least as far as he's concerned.
And that's getting awfully embarrassing. Then again, so is the state of our economy under his leadership. If he could stop focusing however briefly on the idea that Congress is "messing with him," maybe he could see what a mess he's created for the rest of us.
