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| Barack Obama |
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| Joe Biden |
I have held my tongue far too long. This is the fourth "official" mock JOTY (a play on words: the donkey is the Dem mascot and it's meant to address egregious behavior).
What have Obama and Biden done to qualify? First, we had the 4 debates. Joe's laughing, smirking and interrupting were so blatant that even liberal SNL spoofed him. Obama wasn't much better: you could create a college drinking game with how many times he obnoxiously smirked.
Then there's flat-out dishonesty where moderator Candy Crowley threw a flag on Romney's criticism of the Administration's initial public response to the Benghazi consulate attack, falsely asserting (so much to Obama's delight that he asked her to repeat what she just said) Obama had called it an act of terrorism in a Rose Garden speech. I carefully parsed the speech and found clear reference to the Youtube video controversy (as Susan Rice continued to stress over the weekend). The "acts of terror" referred to 9/11/01, and the context was that just as we didn't let 9/11 go unanswered, we would work with the Libyan government to bring the killers, NOT the terrorists, to justice, that the abhorrent video did not justify the use of deadly force. Obama's speechwriters, of course, don't meet the writing standards of this blog. Obama knew Crowley had misread his speech, but he was more interested in scoring political points than to standing up to Romney on his own. He utterly failed a test of integrity and character.
When Romney paid a courtesy post-election visit to the White House, the White House put out a curious release calling him a good businessman. It came across to me as odd for a number of reasons: he hasn't worked in business since 1999; he won about half the states and is a former governor, and the Obama campaign spent all summer attacking him as an outsourcer, offshorer, tax evader, and predatory investor.
I viewed the reelection campaign as unworthy of the American people. He constantly promoted and claimed undue credit for the killing of UBL, he took credit for leaving Iraq {when in fact Bush negotiated the withdrawal schedule and Obama was trying to extend it, and failed to negotiate a residual force). As a Senator and Presidential candidate, he argued against a debt ceiling increase and vowed to cut Bush's deficits in half. He has promoted his job growth record. although he cherry-picks a starting point well into his term, he'll be lucky if we get to break-even for his term (and we need a net of over a million new jobs per year just to accommodate new workers), we have had one of the weakest jobless recoveries in American history, many of the new jobs are part-time and/or temporary, and dips in the unemployment rate have more to do with discouraged unemployed workers no longer counting in official statistics: the lowest labor force participation rates in decades.
Obama has utterly failed to fulfill his promises of a post-partisan Washington, having in fact attacked SCOTUS during a subsequent State of the Union address, he failed to embrace Simpson-Bowles, and he reportedly has threatened to attack Republicans in his inaugural address and State of the Union address if they don't capitulate to his demands over the fiscal cliff. Never mind a key stumbling block is a ideologically based refusal to extend already too high upper division rates, which not only would fail to make more than a down payment on new deficits, it would take away resources to save, invest and consume in the real economy.
Obama is unduly defensive (I've seen spoof counts of Obama using "I" or "we" and George Will references it here) He sets up straw men of outright distortion (he called Bush an "ideological deregulator": regulations actually grew under Bush, and financial deregulation took place under Clinton); he makes reference to the long discredited notion of social darwinism, he blames the economic tsumami on laissez-faire policies, when in fact Bush was hardly a free market guy (e.g., steel tariffs) and expanded entitlements. He also is inflexible in negotiations: he engaged in power politics in steamrolling the 2009 stimulus. ObamaCare and financial reform without any substantive attempts to compromise. He is also in a state of denial: after more than 30 speeches on ObamaCare, he attributed the bill/law's persistent unpopularity to his failure to find the right words, not that the people understood and rejected the policy. The "elections have consequences" rhetoric comes across like a schoolyard taunt and unworthy of a national leader; Obama lost over 20 states in both elections; there is a reason the GOP has won control of the House for 2 consecutive elections. I have seen absolutely no acknowledgment of Obama of this fact or a sincere attempt to seek accommodation in leading a divided government.
Obama has failed to show real leadership. we have. by some estimates, over $80T in actual debt and unfunded liabilities, and Obama has failed to propose a single substantive attempt to control the 60% of the budget on entitlements. In fact, he has failed to submit a credible budget, he has procrastinated on expiring Bush tax cuts for the second time in 3 years and the debt limit crisis. For the most part, he has settled for cheer-leading from the sidelines during legislative sausage making versus proposing his own
Finally, there were a couple of relevant incidents during the campaign that influenced my selection, both from Virginia campaign appearances. There was the Obama Roanoke "you didn't build that" moment, where Obama attempted to co-opt individual achievement. Then Biden said Romney 'will put you all back in chains', a particularly incendiary message in a former Confederate state.
