President Barack Obama Is In Charge

16 Dec, 2009 by Melissa Clouthier

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The downside of being large and in charge is the in charge part. Well, the downside of being large and in charge when things go ill, is the in charge part. Otherwise, being in charge is totally fun.

When it comes to health care, things bode ill. It’s getting less fun to be in charge.

President Obama has waltzed through every permutation of the bill with the finesse of an Old Europe royal, and attempted to make it seem like he’s here and there and everywhere on the legislation. The problem with attempting to look like one is here and there and everywhere, the problem with the laws of physics is this: you are somewhere in space and time. Physical reality exists. When the bill is finished, there will be actual words on a paper, laws, that will change other physical realities, and there will also be a signature on the bottom line of this monstrosity.

President Obama will sign his name to a bill written for him. It certainly isn’t written for the American people. It’s not written for the progressive legislators (who risk being strung up by the hard left). It’s not written for the centrists (who risk, let’s put this in past tense, who risked, everything and have already probably lost everything on this bill). It’s not written for lowering costs. It’s not written for actually improving the lives of Americans.

President Obama will sign a bill where there is really only one winner: Him.

Some lefties are wising up to the President’s narcissistic ways and pushing back. Glenn Greenwald has a must-read piece [yes, you can smack me later, but it’s true] about President’s Obama’s tendency to give the appearance of outside the legislative process…that he’s just waiting on Congress, but that what has happened ’til this point has been exactly what the President wants. Glenn says in Salon:

Let’s repeat that: “This bill appears to be legislation that the president wanted in the first place.” Indeed it does. There are rational, practical reasons why that might be so. If you’re interested in preserving and expanding political power, then, all other things being equal, it’s better to have the pharmaceutical and health insurance industry on your side than opposed to you. Or perhaps they calculated from the start that this was the best bill they could get. The wisdom of that rationale can be debated, but depicting Obama as the impotent progressive victim here of recalcitrant, corrupt centrists is really too much to bear.

The Democrats are twisting themselves into pretzels trying to rationalize their position and their position is coming down on the side of one thing: giving a win to President Obama for its own sake. It will be the death of them all, politically, ironically enough. Even President Obama.

President Obama is in charge. No matter the outcome, this legislation is very much his. Being large and in charge has its downside.