Obama Scorecard

By Anthony Bialy

Obama’s good for something- 2.5 percent of the time

Tracking Barack Obama’s screw-ups may become one of the few full-time non-federal jobs he ever creates. It may not pay well, but what occupation does anymore? In fact, someone has already taken on the chore of tracking the president’s endless mistakes: A Smart Girl Politics user named Dawn re-posted an outstanding list (http://smartgirlpolitics.ning.com/profiles/blogs/what-obama-has-done-in-the) of 115 screw-ups he’s managed during these woeful first six months.

Impressed by the comprehensive register, I took a stab at the opposite challenge: since someone is already keeping up with Obama’s ample errors, I set out to compile a list of his positive developments over half a year.

I thought of three. Finding a few good things was as tricky as keeping up with his many bad things; I would have preferred to spend the time working as a public relations flack for Barbara Boxer or reading the health care bill. Still, here are some extremely rare cases where Obama earned our praise:

1) Teaching pirates a severe lesson- Number 105 on the Barack’s Been Bad list recalls how he “Salutes as heroes three Navy Seals who took down 3 terrorists who threatened one American life and the next day announces members of the Bush admin. will likely stand trial for torturing a terrorist who had played a part in killing 3000 Americans, by pouring water up their nose….”

The latter half was clearly appalling of Obama. But he must get credit for the first part: he did allow SEALs to do their job. In place of trying to engage in U.S.-pirate dialogue or inviting them to an Independence Day barbeque, Obama unleashed our greatest warriors upon the scallywags.

Of course, the true heroes in the story remain our nation’s elite sailors. In flawlessly carrying out the perilous mission, they proved something we already knew: SEALs are badder dudes than even ninjas. But they were allowed to be ruthlessly efficient with the permission of the Commander-In-Chief.

2) Staying on the terror war’s course, kind of- Troops are still in Iraq, and Guantanamo remains open. Of course, those aren’t pleasant realities in an ideal world. But, the president has tacitly admitted that the last officeholder made reasonable decisions under the circumstances on a rather flawed planet named Earth. Some feared that all captured terrorists as well as most of our Iraq-based military personnel would be on American soil hours after the inauguration, but it hasn’t happened. Yet.

Obama knows he can get away with being an economic socialist: at worst, we all end up poor. But he at least occasionally seems to comprehend that lurching too far leftward on security would lead to innocent deaths. In that regard, he’s been willing to betray a handful of his ideals and maintain at least some of Bush’s safety policies. That’s true even if he teases his zealous supporters with hopes that he’ll appease their demands.

We’ll be holding our breath concerning Iraq for awhile, the Afghanistan situation has turned precarious, and Gitmo’s worst inmates could still end up residing in your ZIP code. But there’s hope that Obama might happily remain a hypocrite, telling his supporters one thing about fighting terror while actually sometimes doing the right thing instead.

3) Telling Africa to quit pointing fingers- Obama could have entirely blamed evil colonial imperialists for all of Africa’s troubles during his stopover on the continent. While he did a little anti-colonial ranting, he mostly talked toughly.

Quotes such as “We must start with a simple premise that Africa’s future is up to Africans” and “The West is not responsible for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy over the last decade or wars in which children are enlisted as combatants” could have been from a Heritage Foundation policy paper. But Obama surprisingly and thankfully uttered them in Ghana. Now, we could be really proud if he could only tell the country he actually leads that it’s up to us citizens to fix problems; I suppose we’ll take what we can get.

So, those are three sprouts in the dirt pile. Importantly, there’s a common thread in all these rare cases: Obama behaved like a conservative in each. Neither his tepid willingness to let the military do its job or his notions of self-reliance would have ever been expected from him. Each positive is refreshing precisely because he was acting against type.

Unfortunately, moments like these will remain exceptions. Mostly, he’ll continue to stomp upon free markets while refusing to spend money on one of the government’s few useful functions, namely our collective defense. He’s not willing to tell Kim Jong-Il to sod off or stand up for Iranians who are trying to rid themselves of a regime that happens to despise us and actively promote terror, but he did defend Honduras’s Chavez-backed president when he patently defied his country’s laws.

Such bizarre patterns have been the norm during Obama’s term. But he’s actually also serving a purpose with his fiascos. It leads to a rather indirect fourth accomplishment, namely that Obama is scuttling liberalism by being such a liberal.

He’s showing what happens when a true lefty is driving, namely double-digit unemployment along with massive deficits and looming tax hikes while nation-ruling scoundrels provoke us without fear. Unchecked collectivism paired with an impotent foreign policy will create a new generation of conservatives repulsed by the horrid outcomes. Obama will not merely see his policies rolled back: he’s unwittingly swinging the polls toward support of sensibly limited government that’s activist only when it comes to our protection.

There is obvious precedent for such upheaval in the right’s favor. Jimmy Carter created circumstances so perfectly miserable that he may as well have been on Ronald Reagan’s payroll. Next, Bill Clinton’s attempt to enact his wife’s socialized medicine scheme led to the 1994 Republican congressional takeover; later, fatigue over his nonsense got George W. Bush elected. Bush the Younger’s administration is remembered mostly fondly by conservatives even though he often approved federal expenditures at the same rate I would spend cash at a Labatt wholesaler.

But the best example comes from abroad. Namely, Margaret Thatcher’s revolution came in response to a Labour-led morass; she not only stopped Britain’s rot but also brought back its magnificence. Hmmm, can anyone think of a presently-emerging strong female conservative who could clean up after liberals as part of restoring our nation’s principles and prestige?

Obama is setting up a Sarah Palin-led conservative renaissance that will begin at his term’s midpoint congressional elections and be fully completed in 2012; that will stand as his greatest achievement. Remember to send him a thank-you note, even if it’s not something for which he’d like to receive gratitude.

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