How Obama Went From Hero to Zero in a Week

On Monday 2nd of May it was not looking cushy for the American right.  Yes, along with the rest of America they celebrated the death of global terrorist Osama Bin Laden, but politically they had taken a significant beating.

Only a few days before the death of Bin Laden was announced, the White House had revealed the long version of President Obama’s birth certificate, effectively ending conspiracy monger Donald Trump’s presidential ambitions.  While many on the right (myself included) were thankful that it finally killed off this nonsensical obsession with Barack Obama’s birthplace, it also meant that the entire American right were tarred with the “conspiracy theory” brush – even though the birthers only represented a minority of right-wingers.

The announcement of the death of Bin Laden only made the birther issue worse.  The narrative became that while the right-wing were thumbing through copies of Obama’s “Dreams of My Father” to find evidence that he was a closet Kenyan, Obama was off focusing on bigger issues such as killing the world’s number one terrorist.  Not only did the right look defunct thanks to its loony fringe, but Obama had overcome his reputation of being useless on foreign policy by killing the man that George W Bush had been searching for since 2001.

Immediately, commentators in both American and the UK were drooling over Obama’s prospects for re-election, claiming that his boost in the polls would be enormous, and that the 2012 election was all but over.  Yet a week later, no-one is saying that anymore, and the boost in the polls has (depending on whose polls you read) been either non-existent, or a small jolt that no pollster expects to last until November 2012.  A recent Gallup poll stated that 95% of respondents stated that the death of Bin Laden would not change who they’d vote for.  So what happened?

The first thing that went wrong was that Obama tried to do what he usually does – make himself the hero.  So instead of praising the men and women on the ground, and those who had been doing intelligence on Bin Laden for years, Obama’s announcement speech was filled with continual references about himself and self-congratulatory remarks about his administration.  People like applauding for an actor on stage, but are less likely to do so when the actor starts applauding himself as well.

Also, the blatant hypocrisy of Obama trying to take sole credit of this feat (along with the victory tour to Ground Zero) was fully exposed when it was revealed that the information that found Bin Laden was obtained at Guantanamo Bay (which Obama wants shut down) using waterboarding (which Obama banned) back in 2007, when Obama wasn’t even in office.  Trying to take credit for something that was achieved by methods that he expressly condemned has rightly struck many Americans as trying to have one’s cake and eat it too.

This childish display of taking credit for other people’s work (notably that of President George W Bush, who had to fight tooth and nail against lip trembling lefties like Obama in order to keep such effective methods in place) has been followed up by a laughable show of incompetence from the White House in providing information.

First we were told Bin Laden used his wife as a shield, then he didn’t, then he was armed, then he wasn’t, then he made an act of aggression, then he didn’t, then it was a kill order, then it wasn’t, then it was again, then they were going to release a picture, then they were definitely going to release a picture, then they definitely weren’t going to release a picture.  Even a political junkie like myself still cannot make out exactly what happened in that compound.

This isn’t just about information though, it is about how the Obama administration has been trying to both celebrate and cover up this action at the same time.  The truth is clear; Obama doesn’t like this and neither do the left.  From arch-leftists in Britain such as Ken Livingstone and the Stop the War Coalition to the usual leftist cronies in America such as Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky, we have seen condemnation after condemnation as to how this action was carried out.

Don’t be mistaken; if this was a Republican President, Obama would be amongst those howling in agony at the thought of Bin Laden being “murdered in cold blood”, wailing about his human rights and the abandonment of “our common values of justice.”  Yet because he is President and his numbers were falling, he has had to become part of the American jubilation and patriotism that he finds so distasteful.

On that first day he was fine, but since then his attempt to balance his hard-left credentials with taking the credit for what was essentially a right-wing act performed predominately by other people, has made him seen weak, confused and hypocritical.

Back to business as usual for President Obama

The Left's "Alternative" Has Backfired in America

This week’s announcement by leading rating agency Standard and Poor’s that it has changed its outlook for the United States from “stable” to “negative” is abysmal news both for America, and also the British left.


The announcement – that essentially states that there is a one in three chance that the USA could lose its much valued AAA credit rating within two years – is a stinging condemnation of President Barack Obama’s refusal to make any significant spending cuts and instead to spend even more than his predecessor. Despite a handful of cuts passed through the House of Representatives last week, they look insignificant in the face of other legislation such as the $1 trillion entitlement package known as Obamacare. The message from S&P is clear: the US leadership is not serious about dealing with its deficit and debt, and therefore is putting its economy at significant risk.


For America to lose its AAA rating would be disastrous. To know this, one only needs to look at the way the market reacted when the announcement that America might lose its AAA rating was made: US government bond prices fell alongside the S&P 500, gold prices jumped to a new record of $1,496, and the dollar fell sharply against the euro and the pound. One shudders at the thought of the untold damage it would do to the American economy if they were actually to lose the AAA rating.


Britain on the other hand is judged quite well by Standard and Poor’s. Despite suffering a recession twice as severe as that of the US, the UK is praised for being on a credible fiscal consolidation plan that “sets the country’s general government deficit on a medium-term downward path, retreating below 5% of GDP by 2013.” Simply put, George Osborne is doing the right thing, and Britain is on the right track.


Not only is the praise of Tory policy bad for the British left, but the condemnation of the Obama Administration’s economic policy is also a condemnation of the so-called “alternative” that many on the British left have been calling for in recent months. Obama’s pseudo-Keynesian economic policies of tax and spend are exactly the same as those being called for by senior left-wing politicians in this country, and Obama’s programme has been specifically held up as the example to follow by both Ed Balls and Ken Livingstone.


The ludicrous Obama policy of spending oneself out of recession has backfired spectacularly and yet is the policy that is still advocated in Britain by left-wing groups such as the Labour Party, the Socialist Worker Party, and unions such as the TUC. Their “alternative” is being played out in America, and is bringing the once strong leader of the free world to its knees.

Had Britain followed this outdated form of economics – which was the reason our recession was so brutal in the first place – then we would not only be in the same precarious situation in which
America now finds itself, but it would be even worse as for smaller nation like Britain that would be less able to absorb the shock of the consequences of a drop in credit rating.


The left’s economic policies have been wrapped up in fluffy language and good intentions. Unfortunately, economic reality takes little notice of either of these two things, and this warning shot fired by Standard and Poor’s should wake those who thought our deficits and debt were low priorities out of their slumber. If Britain wishes to be open for business once again, and begin rebuilding its once strong economy, it must continue along the line of cuts as it is doing. Should it fail to do so, it will follow its allies across the pond into another economic crisis. We must not allow left-wing groups here to convince us to drag us off our present course.