John Feehery

It was bad enough that he beat the most viable female presidential candidate in our nation’s history. Now it seems the president is going out of his way to irritate the fairer sex in our nation.

Most men like me already distrusted Barack Obama. It is no shock to anyone that white men voted overwhelmingly against candidate Obama in the last election, while women voted overwhelmingly for him.

What is shocking is seeing how the Obama Democrats are now seemingly going out of their way to irritate working women, and especially working mothers.

How do I count the ways?

The president’s bow to the Japanese emperor caused great concern among conservative pundits and politicians. Even Dick Cheney, a noteworthy friend of the Japanese, said that it was inappropriate for an American president to show such exaggerated respect to any foreign leader.

I didn’t have much of a problem with the bow, because the Japanese aren’t the economic or military threat they once were. I thought the bow was nice, and showed that we still value a relationship that is not nearly as important as it once was.

The Obama administration is making some unbelievable unforced errors when it comes to the key concerns of the American people.

Perhaps the top concern is jobs. The White House staff have been slow to realize that job creation would be so critical to their own job security. They haven’t focused much on it rhetorically, their stimulus has failed to create many jobs, and their other legislative efforts — cap-and-trade and the healthcare bill — are job-killers.

When the world convenes in Copenhagen, Denmark, for further talks about what to do about global warming and climate change, most of the press attention will inevitably be focused on what America and China have failed to do to achieve their carbon reduction targets.

But that is not the only issue that ought to be discussed. Indeed, it is probably not the most important one.

According to The Associated Press (and I am not making this up), Cuba’s dictator loves Barack Obama.

“Fidel Castro appears to have a fascination with the American leader that would make Obama Girl jealous, writing obsessively not only about his politics, but of his youth and vigor. And unlike with past American heads-of-state — he slammed President George W. Bush as a genocidal drunk — Castro seems to genuinely like the fresh face in Washington.”

A.B. Stoddard and Republican strategist John Feehery discuss how the Republican Party could open itself up to a centrist base, and how the abortion amendment might be the downfall of the Democrats' healthcare bill.

I was gone last weekend, so I wasn’t paying too much attention to the floor debate and amendment process that surrounded the healthcare bill.

That is why I was surprised when I saw Republicans (except for Rep. John Shadegg, Ariz.) vote for an amendment that made it easier for Democrats to pass their healthcare bill.

My understanding of the role of the minority is to be as unhelpful as possible, especially when the majority is passing legislation that not only offends the very principles of the minority, but will bankrupt the nation to boot.

I still remember my freshman-year philosophy teacher intoning, in mind-numbing fashion, “Being qua Being.” He was talking about the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, and his seminal philosophical work Being and Time.

I never could figure out what my philosophy teacher was talking about, and since it was my second semester and springtime in Milwaukee, I did not particularly care, an attitude which landed me my second-worst grade in my college career.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers, has a basic theory about what makes people truly successful. He says that if you have the right education, the right timing and the right experience, combined with a truly extraordinary work ethic, you can be an outlier, somebody who succeeds beyond everyone’s expectations.

One of the nuggets in this very interesting book is Gladwell’s reciting of the 10,000-hour rule. Gladwell repeats the theory that for someone to be truly proficient in a complex task, that person must work at it for 10,000 hours or more. Ten thousand hours is a long time, about 10 years.

It was the French general Ferdinand Foch who said during the First World War: "Hard pressed on my right. My center is yielding. Impossible to maneuver. Situation excellent. I attack."

Foch’s tactics during the Great War, as it was called back then, unnecessarily killed hundred of thousands of French troops at the Battle of the Somme, leading to his eventual dismissal and an unhappy place in history.