Out of Africa

One might call it "fiddling while Rome is burning" … or an early case of “senioritis” … or, to use the silly White House term, “leading from behind” … but clearly President Obama is detaching himself from governing (if he ever was attached.)   His extravagant trip (family vacation?) to Africa (see: Breitbart Story) seems to this commentator to be a series of vacuous photo ops and frivolous distractions from important national and world issues.  The many domestic scandals and problems plaguing his administration desperately need his attention … as do the volatile events in Egypt, Syria, Turkey, the European Union, Russia, world-wide central banking systems, etc.  Yet he seems distracted and somehow disinterested … e.g., “I’m not going to scramble jets to capture Snowden.”

Yes Obama is suave … someone who can read a teleprompter as though he knows what it all means.  But he is also the President of the most powerful country in the world (at least in title if not in form) and there are a large number of things that need his attention and leadership: domestic job growth, tax reform, entitlement reform, management of our transition to Obamacare, reduction of our crushing deficits, foreign-policy fibrillation, the threat of growing Islamic extremism, the dramatic increase in student-loan interest rates, our decaying national infrastructure, the scandals plaguing many in his Cabinet, and maybe even immigration reform.  Yet he has really acted on none of these issues.  Yes, he has talked about most of them and made rhetorical promises, but there is a chasm between his talk and his actions.

I am not a historian, but I have a suspicion that Obama is in real danger of becoming the Calvin Coolidge of our time … only as opposed to being labeled Silent Cal (detached and no action), he might be better tagged Blathering Barry (all talk and no action).