by Ben Shapiro
Thus the Blessed One spake.
Worship for Obama is the only thing that has prevented him from imploding in personal approval polls. The historically large gap between disapproval for a president’s policies and approval for the president during this administration personally boggles the mind. His personal job approval numbers have never dropped below 41 percent, according to poll averages.18 Yet his job approval numbers on the economy routinely drop below 40 percent, hitting their low in September 2011, when less than 34 percent of the public approved of his performance.19 His job approval numbers on health care, his signature issue, have been in the toilet consistently since the launch of Obamacare, hitting their low in August 2011, when just 20 percent of the public approved of his policies.20 Foreign policy is the president’s best-polling area, and even there, his approval ratings dropped dramatically in the summer months of 2013.21 Yet he remains largely popular, especially among Democrats, who treat their Sun King as Justin’s Beliebers treat their icon. His approval rating has never dropped below 70 percent among Democrats, and generally hovers well above 80 percent.22
Compare those numbers with the numbers for President George W. Bush. His last positive job approval numbers appeared in February 2005. From there, he saw a drop-off so dramatic that by the time he left office, just 28 percent of Americans approved of his job performance. Just a bare majority within his own party approved of his job performance in those polls.
How can Obama continue to ride high in the public opinion polls when nobody really likes his policies?
The answer is that nobody holds Obama responsible for his policies. They see him merely as a figure, a principle, a talisman of good feeling. As sycophant rapper Jay-Z put it, President Obama’s “presence is charity. . . . Obama provides hope. Whether he does anything, the hope that he provides for a nation, and outside of America is enough. Just being who he is.”23
THE DUALITY OF SUPERMAN
This is an air Obama cultivates. He projects an air of übercompetence, a willingness to go it alone; his White House Flickr account routinely features hero shots of him, back to the sun, gazing toward the future in full Mao style. Simultaneously, however, he portrays himself as the victim of circumstance, a mere cork bouncing merrily along the surface of politics, a target of enemies both without and within.
World-beater Obama is the campaign guy—the man who begins to speak the moment he sees a light go on (which makes trips to the refrigerator particularly lengthy). This is the fellow who suggests that he can single-handedly fix Americans’ problems. Upon entering office, Obama portrayed himself as a transformative figure, the messenger of Hope and Change. He pledged a new day for American government. Transparency? He would run the “most transparent administration in history.” Ethics? He would preside over the most “ethical administration in U.S. history.” Success? Why, he wouldn’t just solve unemployment, the national debt, and financial malfeasance, he’d reverse the rise of the oceans and make the world safe for our children’s children (so long as they could escape the uterus unharmed). Congress wouldn’t stand in his way. The Supreme Court wouldn’t stand in his way. Neither would state power, religious institutions, charitable institutions, the business community, or the family unit.
Then there’s President Obama—the man who is supposed to govern. When it comes to actual matters of government, Obama suddenly becomes invisible. Again and again, Obama has fostered the impression of individual power by claiming that he can act alone, without Congress. Then again, he contends on the very same issues that he can’t act alone, and ultimately isn’t responsible for action or lack thereof.
Here’s Obama on gun control: “I am constrained . . . by the system that our founders put in place.”24 And here’s Obama on gun control: “Even without Congress, my administration will keep doing everything it can to protect more of our communities.”25
Here’s Obama on immigration: “This notion that somehow I can just change the laws unilaterally is not true. The fact of the matter is there are laws on the books I have to enforce. And there is a great disservice done to the cause of getting the DREAM Act passed and comprehensive immigration reform passed by perpetuating the notion that somehow by myself I can just go and do these things.”26 And here’s Obama on immigration: “If Congress is unable to move forward in a timely fashion, I will send up a bill based on my proposal and insist they vote on it right away.”27
Here’s Obama on tax policy: “So where I can act on my own, I’m going to act on my own. I won’t wait for Congress.” And again: “That means whatever executive authority I have to help the middle class, I’ll use it.” And again: “We’re going to do everything we can, wherever we can, with our without Congress.”28 And here’s Obama on tax policy: “The one thing about being president is, after four years, you get pretty humbled. You’d think maybe you wouldn’t, but actually you become more humble. You realize what you don’t know. You realize, you know, all the mistakes you made. But you also realize you can’t do things by yourself. That’s not how our system works. You’ve got to have the help and the goodwill of Congress. . . .”29
President Obama has contended, over and over, that he is surprised by the actions of his own executive branch. Over and over, he has contended that the way he has learned about scandals within his own administration is from the nightly news. Dan Pfeiffer, a top White House adviser, said in May 2013 that President Obama was personally unaware of the IRS scandal. “No one in the White House was aware,” he said on national television.30 When the Obamacare website began disastrously with glitches lasting weeks, White House press secretary Jay Carney blithely informed the press that Obama didn’t know “until the problems manifested themselves” after reports in the press.31 Similarly, President Obama found out about the Department of Justice targeting reporters from “the news reports,”32 and the Solyndra scandal from “some news accounts.”33 He was supposedly unaware that his own NSA was spying on foreign leaders with whom we are under treaty.34
So, which is it? Is our president a helpless naïf, wandering door to door in search of aid? Or is he an aspiring authoritarian in control of his operation?
In the end, it doesn’t matter. President Obama’s executive branch is his. As he himself said about 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, “if he aspires to being president one of the things you learn is, you are ultimately responsible for the conduct of your operations.”35
The fact is that when Barack Obama said he would act alone, what he really meant is that he would act with hundreds of agencies, dozens of czars, and millions of federal employees to back him. In our system, thanks to a hundred years of executive branch growth, the president does bear outsize power. Thanks to Supreme Court decisions stretching back decades, the president has the ability to unilaterally change policy through executive orders; the limits on executive orders are quite vague. The president also has the ability to appoint regulatory bureaucrats, whose authority is only constrained by statute—and in many cases, whose administrative judgments are virtually unreviewable. The power of the legislative branch has declined since the rise of Wilsonian progressivism, but the power of the executive branch has expanded dramatically.
Which is why President Obama’s claims of impotence ring hollow. On gun control, President Obama ended up acting alone by signing several executive orders curtailing Americans’ Second Amendment rights. President Obama unilaterally refused to enforce immigration law with regard to young illegal immigrants. President Obama unilaterally shifted cash during sequestration in order to harm taxpayers in a blatant political attempt to create impetus for tax and spending increases.
That doesn’t mean the president can do everything he’d like to do. Congressional action is still necessary for the most epic federal encroachment. And it’s just those constitutional boundaries that force the Obama administration into the realm of illegality.
The Obama administration is honeycombed with criminality. Yet the administration routinely claims that
investigations are under way, that low-level staffers are responsible for all the problems, and that the president remains pristine, clean from the taint of scandal. As we will see, however, the Obama administration has shown a peculiar willingness to overlook the criminality of those who help its agenda. Promotions are in store for those who break the law to benefit the Obama platform. Even those who are moved out of positions of power are handed cushy jobs outside the administration, helping to push forward the Hope and Change externally.
So why doesn’t anyone seem to notice?
WHO WATCHES THE WATCHMEN?
Let’s go back to those dreaded days Before Barack, when a benighted dunderhead who didn’t maintain dominion over the seas or the English language held the Oval Office. The press routinely climbed all over George W. Bush. Every scandal went all the way to the top. Every whiff of nastiness spread all over the administration. Bu$hitler was a war profiteer willing to trade American blood for oil. He supposedly signed off on Abu Ghraib. He was responsible for the political scouring of the Department of Justice, the outing of a CIA agent, the illegal torture of detainees, racist-driven slow response time to Hurricane Katrina, bribery of journalists, and much, much more. The New York Times approvingly reported on former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi’s book accusing George W. Bush of premeditated murder.36
This was the press doing its job—seriously. Yes, the press is leftist. Yes, the press hates Republicans. Yes, the press attempted to draw every possible inference from every possible Bush administration screwup, justified or not. But better an overzealous press than an underzealous one. As Thomas Jefferson said, “The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure.”
The press is no longer free, however. Or at least, they have forged their own fetters, and shackled themselves to a corrupt president. Blinded by their own godworship for the first major party black candidate in American history, charmed by his speech patterns and bloviating language, the press decided early on that this man, Barack Obama, held potential for change unparalleled in American history. The wild celebration with which the press met Obama’s initial nomination finds no match in the history of the media. As Chris Matthews put it four years into Obama’s failed tenure, “Everything he’s done is clean as a whistle. He’s never not only broken any law, he’s never done anything wrong. He’s the perfect father, the perfect husband, the perfect American. And all they do is trash the guy.” According to Matthews, like the rest of his compatriots in the media, criticism of Obama could be explained only by appeal to racism.37
The press, like the good flunkies for the Obama they have become, now abide by the crucial mob rule: snitches get stitches. When legendary journalist Bob Woodward criticized the White House’s strategy on the mandatory spending cuts known as sequestration, he was told by Gene Sperling that he would “regret” speaking out with that perspective. Woodward said, “It makes me very uncomfortable to have the White House telling reporters you’re going to regret doing something you believe in.”38 Instead of the media jumping to Woodward’s defense, they jumped to the attack, accusing him of exaggerating the White House’s behavior—even as major journalist after major journalist, from Ron Fournier of the National Journal to David Jackson of USA Today, confirmed the general notion that the White House routinely treated reporters with hostile intent.39 When it emerged that the Department of Justice had targeted both the Associated Press and Fox News, the press responded with a united front of faux indignation . . . which promptly faded away, leading the media to begin speculating about whether all of the Obama administration scandals had been overblown.
Obsessed with their hand-chosen One, the press have ignored scandals that would have sunk any Republican below Richard Nixon in the public mind. The mainstream media did not uncover any of the major scandals of the Obama administration. Not a single one. Virtually all were revealed by foreign press, bloggers, Fox News, or government document dumps.40 In fact, the media have gone out of their way to cover up those scandals, turning the stories into laments about Republican overreach and unjust attacks on President Obama. The audacity of Jay Carney and President Obama in declaring their myriad scandals “phony” springs from their well-grounded assumption that the media will never allow those scandals to coagulate into anything truly damaging.
After all, there’s progressive work to be done.
THE OBAMOB
The RICO statute was designed to target the mafia—an organization that top law enforcement officials including FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover insisted for years didn’t exist. According to the Department of Justice, “Congress found that organized crime, particularly La Cosa Nostra, had extensively infiltrated and exercised corrupt influence over numerous legitimate businesses and labor unions throughout the United States, and hence posed ‘a new threat to the American economic system.’ ” Congress expressly worried in the RICO law itself that organized crime was using its money and power to “subvert and corrupt our democratic processes.”41
Clearly, those worries were understated. Now the chief threat to the democratic process comes not from the mafia but from within the government itself.
President Obama is that threat. It’s safe to be an ally of President Obama’s. It’s very dangerous to be an enemy. That isn’t chance. That’s design. “If they bring a knife to the fight,” then-candidate Obama said in 2008, “we bring a gun.” The executive branch is President Obama’s gun. But gangster John Gotti had a rule about guns that President Obama makes sure to follow: “It’s nice to have them close by, but don’t carry them. You might get arrested.”
In The Godfather, new mob boss Michael Corleone meets with his soon-to-be wife, Kay. He has just taken over day-to-day operating duties from his father, Don Corleone.
“My father is no different than any other powerful man,” he says. “Any man who is responsible for other people, like a senator or a president.”
“You know how naïve you sound?” Kay shoots back.
“Why?”
“Senators and presidents don’t have men killed.”
Michael shakes his head. “Oh. Who’s being naïve, Kay?”
We’ve been naïve. And thanks to that naïveté, President Obama is getting away with murder.
COUNT 1
ESPIONAGE
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Whoever, with intent or reason to believe that it is to be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation, communicates, delivers, or transmits, or attempts to communicate, deliver, or transmit, to any foreign government, or to any faction or party or military or naval force within a foreign country, whether recognized or unrecognized by the United States, or to any representative, officer, agent, employee, subject, or citizen thereof, either directly or indirectly, any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, note, instrument, appliance, or information relating to the national defense, shall be punished by death or by imprisonment for any term of years or for life. . . . If two or more persons conspire to violate this section, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each of the parties to such conspiracy shall be subject to the punishment provided for the offense which is the object of such conspiracy.
—18 U.S. CODE § 794
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OPENING ARGUMENT
Their bodies were carried slowly off an American military jet by stiffly starched Marines in their dress blues. Their coffins were covered in American flags. And as they were loaded into the waiting hearses, which sat underneath an enormous star-spangled banner, the president of the United States and the secretary of state comforted one another. He wore a black suit and a striped tie; she wore a black pantsuit and a three-layered pearl necklace. Both wore solemn faces.
The pre
sident spoke first from the podium, flanked by the maternal-looking secretary of state. “Their sacrifice will never be forgotten,” he said. “We will bring justice to those who took them from us.” He continued, “The United States of America will never retreat from the world. We will never stop working for the dignity and freedom that every [person] deserves. . . . That’s the essence of American leadership. . . . That was their work in Benghazi, and that is the work we will carry on.”
“Four Americans, four patriots,” he concluded. “They loved this country. They chose to serve it, and served it well. . . . Their sacrifice will never be forgotten.”
Then the secretary of state stepped to the microphone. “Today we bring home four Americans who gave their lives for our country and our values,” she said. “To the families of our fallen colleagues, I offer our most heartfelt condolences and deepest gratitude . . . we will wipe away our tears, stiffen our spines, and face the future undaunted.”1
As the bodies of Ambassador Christopher Stevens, State Department employee Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods lay before them, the president and secretary of state were already planning their own futures. President Barack Obama was planning a reelection campaign event in Washington, D.C.2 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was already planning her 2016 run for the presidency.