Simply Reprehensible- Obama’s Exit and the Democrats’ Boycott
In the final few days of his presidency, Barack Obama is determined at long last to go out of office in a blaze of glory, by revealing his latent and utter contempt for his country, which has so roundly rejected his presidency in their refusal to elect Hillary Clinton as his successor. As he himself told the country during the campaign, this election of 2016 was essentially a national referendum on his presidency, and the voters effectively said, “No, thanks,” much to his chagrin. So incensed that his presidency was, in essence, rejected by the voters who, save for California and New York gave Trump a landslide in both popular as well as electoral votes, he has decided to unleash the unlimited contempt in which he holds much of the rest of the country, in his actions since the election- actions he most assuredly would not have taken, had Hillary Clinton won the election.
These acts of pure spite include U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power’s abstention of a United Nations vote to condemn Israel (for settlements in the West Bank and Israeli presence in parts of Jerusalem), his continued release of most of the remaining Guantanamo detainees to countries unwilling to keep these imprisoned terrorists off of the battlefield, a record and staggering number of prison sentence commutations, primarily benefitting African-American felons, and, most egregiously, his pardon of Army PFC Bradley (aka Chelsea) Manning, against the wishes of his own Defense Secretary and legislators from both parties. Had Private Manning been convicted of treason, as was he/she originally charged, he/she might have faced the death penalty, but he/she pled down these charges in a bargained agreement that sentenced him/her to thirty-five years, instead. Now, thanks to the outright treachery of Barack Obama, Bradley will walk out of prison having served less than seven years.
Since his “apology tour” in the early months of 2009, in a host of actions regarding his use of multiple federal agencies to target his political opponents, in the foreign policies he has pursued, in the domestic policies and use of executive orders that have effectively stymied small business in particular, Barack Obama has spent the entirety of his presidency lowering the standing of the United States in the world, in order to vouchsafe his assertion that the United States is anything but exceptional. Worse, his actions regarding issues of race have largely set this country back sixty years, as evidenced by the rise of Black Lives Matter and the increasing level of police killings across the country- both of which can be traced to how he handled riots in Ferguson and Baltimore, as well as his reaction to the 2009 arrest of Louis Gates. Despite what has been reported as his own personal popularity, based upon polls conducted by the same entities which guaranteed Hillary Clinton’s victory, it is also no stretch to say that, as president, Obama has consistently not acted in the best interests of America. Given the abject failure of his signature Affordable Care Act, Obama’s historical accomplishments (i.e. his legacy) as president basically boil down to having been elected the nation’s first black president, and little else.
As of this writing, sixty Democrats in the House of Representatives (one third of the entire Democrat caucus in that chamber) have determined to boycott the inauguration of Obama’s successor, Donald J. Trump, in the final few days before what is supposed to be an orderly and peaceful transition of presidential power. What these reprehensible representatives are doing is nothing short of the betrayal of the United States Constitution they have sworn to uphold, and by such actions they have thus betrayed the constituents they represent, in their petulant and pathetic protest of Trump’s presidency. Not unlike the actions of Private Manning, who clearly violated his/her own vows to defend the Constitution by releasing classified information to WikiLeaks in 2010, these congressmen and congresswomen have effectively told their constituents that allegiance to their political party (forgive the term) trumps their allegiance to the country, at large.
As evidenced by the way President-elect Trump has reached out to his opponents, both Republican and Democrat, the new president will ultimately rise above the scorn with which these Democrats have held him- not that they deserve any further regard from him. The fact of the matter is that Trump can pursue his agenda without their help, assuming a united Republican caucus in both chambers of Congress, and when the time comes for these sixty reprobates to run for re-election, their constituents would do well to remember that, when the time came for the country to be reunited, if only for a day, they were nowhere to be found. Furthermore, as President Obama exits the White House, smug in the sense of his own flawlessness, the country can look forward to transcending his ultimate failure to faithfully serve the people who put him in office.
Yes, January 20th, 2017 cannot come soon enough.
-Drew Nickell, 18 January 2017
© 2017 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
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