The Administration

Most interesting in the case of the controversial Frank Gehry memorial to Dwight Eisenhower is that it has brought Ike, our great heartland warrior, back to the popular front in the face of strong opposition from establishment figures and government councils. Ike is again a folk hero, the new man for our times; but this time an antihero rising against the establishment.

And that would make sense given his famous last words: “We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth; and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.”

President Obama has been hijacked by those on the cultural left who live on the edge of the woods and those lost long and vengeful in the dark forest. Lady Gaga’s "controversial" “Judas” performance projects onto Obama. Frank Gehry, of the army of post-war artists and academics lost on the path to transfiguration, reflects on Obama. Every Hollywood narcissist whose time has passed who raises cash for BHO reflects on him whenever she enters rehab. BHO needs an overhaul, and not another queer eye for the straight guy. He needs to rediscover his Kansas roots.

The New York Times has another story of President Obama's forcefulness in the face of national security challenges — the second this week. Today's issue contains a report about Obama ordering cyberattacks on Iran, and the 6,000-word opus the Times ran on Tuesday about Obama's drone campaign is still on the lips of everyone in Washington. A must-read indeed.

Think what you will about the burgeoning use of drone strikes to kill terrorists, the cost, efficacy and sustainability of such a warfare program, the story includes fascinating political revelations as well. To start with, Obama's declaration on day two in office that he would close Guantanamo Bay within one year was not only a goal that would turn out to be impossible, but Obama didn't even expect closing Gitmo to be hard. So ignorant to the political realities of his promise was Obama that he ignored the advice of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder that they might get started lobbying Congress on the issue. They were told no, that healthcare reform was the higher priority.

When I was writing a book about Bill Clinton’s post-presidency, I tracked down every artist I could find who painted Bill. One of them was Simmie Knox, son of a sharecropper and the first African-American commissioned to paint the official White House portrait of a president. Knox told me about his boyhood on a plantation/farm and the segregated schools he attended.

In June 2004 in the East Room at the Bush White House — like now, the country in the midst of a mean reelection campaign — Knox’s portraits of Bill and Hillary, then U.S. senator from New York, were unveiled. I wrote in my book that President Bush won over the Clintons with his greeting, “Welcome home,” and reminded the assembled that he and his father call each other “41” and “43.” Turing to Clinton, Bush said, “We’re glad you’re here, 42.” That was the start of a thaw that produced a genuine and continuing friendship between 41 and 42. When the then-president mentioned Clinton’s mother, Virginia Kelley, and “the incredible pride” she would have felt that morning — she had died in 1994 — he brought the former president to tears.

Al Kamen’s “In the Loop” column in The Washington Post reports that even though Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton only shows up 33 times on the White House logs over the past three years, her spokesman says Clinton has actually made 681 trips to the White House.

The obvious question that follows is that if signing into the White House visitor logs is routinely ignored for, as Kamen called them, “bigwigs” who most often get waved in, are they a legitimate tool for the public to learn which lobbyists are camping out in the White House doing business?

Chairman Doc Hastings’s House Resources Committee released secret audio in which an Obama administration Interior Department official stunningly states, in connection to their rewrite of the 2008 Stream Buffer Rule, “this is not the real world, this is rulemaking” as a justification for not considering actual “conditions on the ground.”
 
“This is not the real world, this is rulemaking” should be the new slogan of Obama’s Committee to Reelect the President.

When it comes to those American whites who are uncomfortable with a black president, there has been no shortage of racial distortion either. Some have tried to use Obama's skin color and Muslim name to prey upon the fears of a white electorate that has seen its economic prosperity plummet amid an overall decline in America's global influence. Others have even gone so far as to question his citizenship and his birthright. Still others have deliberately misconstrued his political philosophy in a racially tinged manner — asserting that he's an African anti-colonial revolutionary.

She: I love you.

He: Thank you.


Wow. That kind of cool repartee, by a young man courting a young woman, says a lot about the style and temperament of our president. David Mariness’s book excerpt in the recent Vanity Fair includes stories about President Obama’s college days in New York City, from which this telling “romantic” exchange took place.

Vice President Biden indicated in a passionate speech yesterday that the American Dream was dying (Obama was elected president) for those not born with a silver spoon in their mouth.

It is difficult to understand how he has arrived at such conclusions. In fact, there are many hardworking Americans who, despite the difficult economic times, are finding ways to be successful and productive.

True libertarians do not care what people do in their private lives.

Phony libertarians use private-life issues as partisan political weapons, as the pseudo-libertarian Rand Paul does in his low-grade comments that mock honorable libertarianism as much as they mock President Obama.