This presidency: Reasons why what seemed like a great idea isn't working

An interesting article in American Thinker. HT to Doug
Selected text from the article:

How could a new president riding in on a wave of unprecedented promise and goodwill have forfeited his tenure and become a lame duck in six months? His poll ratings are in free fall. In generic balloting, the Republicans have now seized a five point advantage. This truly is unbelievable. What's going on?

No narrative. Obama doesn't have a narrative. No, not a narrative about himself. He has a self-narrative, much of it fabricated, cleverly disguised or written by someone else. But this self-narrative is isolated and doesn't connect with us.  He doesn't have an American narrative that draws upon the rest of us. All successful presidents have a narrative about the American character that intersects with their own where they display a command of history and reveal an authenticity at the core of their personality that resonates in a positive endearing way with the majority of Americans.

Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Wall Street Journal points out: He is failing because he has no understanding of the American people, and may indeed loathe them.

... he's dissed just about every one of us--financiers, energy producers, banks, insurance executives, police officers, doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, post office workers, and anybody else who has a non-green job.

If this much intrigues you, please click over to AT and read the rest.



Well, duh. He was born in Hawaii (maybe). Not exactly mainstream, not even mainland. Not to dis Hawaii, but it was a state for a scant 2 years before he was born. Before that, it was annexed occupied territory, some consider military occupation.
From the age of 3, maybe younger, the father-figure was Indonesian. From age 6-10, he lived in Indonesia, a Muslim country, with a Muslim step-father and attended a Muslim school. His father was also Muslim, but since Mom left him when Barack was 6 months old, and he only saw his son once more when Barack returned to Hawaii at the age of 10, I don't think he really counts. Dreams of his father are probably just that, dreams with no real memories to base them on.
From age 10 to 18, he lived again in Hawaii. Note that he says he was raised by his grandparents, but his mother was in Hawaii from 72 to 77, when BO was 11 through 16, so one can't really think she was not an influence. If nothing else than culturally, Indonesia had to be a factor in shaping BO's world view.
The family is remarkably well educated, given the grandparents were not college graduates. Mom, dad, and half-sister all held PhD's while step-dad  had a Masters. All educated at UHI, a certified bastion of conservative values.
One of the consistent threads throughout the personal histories of Barack's family is rebelliousness and free-thinking. One imagines a beatnik family sipping espresso in a poetry bar. His mother was particularly "outside-the-box." You can find all this stuff in Wikipedia.
One of the lesser known aspects of Hawaii - racism against whites. Apparently, a lot of Hawaiians feel justified and entitled to be hostile towards whites. And whites are a minority in the state (~25% of the population). Here's a sample:

A Hawaiian Studies professor at the University of Hawaii, Haunani-Kay Trask, in her 1999 book, From A Native Daughter, wrote: "Just as … all exploited peoples are justified in feeling hostile and resentful toward those who exploit them, so we Hawaiians are justified in such feelings toward the haole. This is the legacy of racism, of colonialism."

In a poem titled, "Racist White Woman," Trask wrote: "I could kick/Your face, puncture/Both eyes./You deserve this kind/Of violence./No more vicious/Tongues, obscene/Lies./Just a knife/Slitting your tight/Little heart."

How aloha. There is a pretty strong group/movement for sovereignty. No really, Hawaii wants to secede from the US. Check this out:

Dr. Sai has a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Hawai`i at Manoa specializing in international relations and public law, with particular emphasis on the legal and political history of the Hawaiian Kingdom. His doctoral dissertation is titled "The American Occupation of the Hawaiian Kingdom: Beginning the Transition from Occupied to Restored State." Dr. Sai also served as lead agent in international arbitration proceedings (Larsen v. Hawaiian Kingdom) at the Permanent Court of Arbitration, The Hague, Netherlands (1999-2001); filed a Complaint with the United Nations Security Council on July 5, 2001; and has numerous articles on the legal status of the Hawaiian Kingdom as a sovereign and independent State. 

And filed a complaint against OB, et al on June 1 2010 in Federal Court for violation of an 1893 Executive Agreement between the United States and the Hawaiian Kingdom. The executive agreements say that Hawaiian executive power was temporarily and conditionally assigned to the President to administer Hawaiian Kingdom law throughout the Hawaiian Islands. This executive agreement, known as the Lili`uokalani assignment (January 17, 1893), was signed under threat of war, and binds President Cleveland's successors in office in the administration of Hawaiian Kingdom law until such time as the Hawaiian Kingdom government has been restored in accordance with a second executive agreement between the Queen and President, known as the Agreement of restoration (December 18, 1893), whereupon the executive power would be returned and the Hawaiian Kingdom would grant amnesty to those individuals who participated or supported the 1893 insurrection. 

Well, there is a lot more to the complaint, but if the US is violating the agreements by not restoring power to the Kingdom, those haolos should be arrested and prosecuted in the Hague. Doesn't this sound a lot like Mexico and the Southwest?

You won't find the racism stuff in the wiki, but you can certainly google it. 

One of my observations from Alaska is that partly due to the time difference (decades ago probably because of the time to get mail), what happens on the mainland seems irrelevant and far away. There is a sort of mutual "who cares." Hawaii is further away, and not even connected. I'm out in the middle of the vast Pacific, you can't touch me. By the time you get to Indonesia, I'm thinking the US doesn't come up in polite conversation. Just not relevant, certainly strange and occasionally offensive.

To summarize, there isn't any love lost between Indonesia and the US, there is substantial resentment between Hawaiians and the US (occupiers), and this is the backdrop that BO grew up in until he was 18. At which point, he attended 3 uber-liberal bastions of national self-hate, Occidental, Columbia and Harvard. His mother had a reputation for rejecting whatever her American norms were, seemingly as a matter of pride. Oh, on a side note, Hawaiians generally don't have a lot of respect for the people who go to the private, very expensive Punahou school (tuition $17,300/year), which is considered elitist, stuck-up, snobbish. That may have been the worst prejudice that BO experienced. Go figure.

If you have a hard time trying to relate to the world BO grew up in, don't know anything about SE Asian, pacific and native Hawaiian culture, can't quite figure out where he's coming from, then consider this: he doesn't have any better understanding of how you grew up and how your values and world view might differ. Furthermore, it appears that he doesn't care. Instead, you would be much better off seeing the world the way he does because, after all (in case you forgot), he's the president.