From the Other Side of the Edge….
“I am NOT Darth Vader….”
By Joe Facinoli 

He got elected, the first time, on the bold promise that he would bring glorious Hope to the desolate and the downtrodden, those who had all but given up; and that miraculous Change would come, to a country which desperately needed it.   

And, oh by the way, because he wasn’t George Bush, ….as he reminded us, again and again.        

So what did we get, instead?

For all the bluster, and words, and promises, all we got was a remake of none other than Richard Nixon, for God’s sake!

And complete with a Barack Obama impression of Tricky Dick’s now tragically comic, and forever infamous  “….I’m not a crook”   line, thirty nine years later!!

Oh my God, should we really give it up now?   Just walk away, and throw in the towel?  

The laws of gravity just don’t seem to apply anymore!  

Because, while it’s fairly obvious that things simply can’t get any worse in Washington, what with the incompetent group of elected officials there, from all parties, and you think that the only way left just has to be UP, because it’s not possible to go any lower, this cabal somehow finds a way to keep digging that hole a little deeper, every day.  

And they continue to make hideous, embarrassing, and shameful mistake after mistake after miscue, even while trying to fix their mistakes!

By uttering the phrase:   “I am not Dick Cheney….”, to Charlie Rose in an extended interview on Sunday, BHO not only didn’t hit his intended (and constant) target, that being the ever-convenient piñata with the “W” painted all over it, but he jumped right over it, and all the way back four politically miserable decades (mostly), to a time when “all the President’s men” back then, really played rough, and never took any prisoners, literally.  

To a time that will forever tarnish the legacy of the Presidency, and to a time, and to a person, that most Americans (who actually still give a damn) would like to forget.

While trying to extricate his sorry butt, and his administration’s, from his and their latest attempt at self-immolation (they kinda like to set themselves on fire a lot), he thought he could just get away with another well thrown pitcher’s pitch, to a batter who has long since retired, and vanished from public view.  

But the zip is gone from that inside fastball now, with even the “umpires” in the media able to see through that bogus and tired refrain, and this one cost him dearly, having been immediately crushed, and right back at him.  

By gleefully protesting that he is not somehow akin to the disparaged George Bush’s hated VP (hated so much, that he earned the nickname “Darth Vader”, for his often merciless tactics), he only draws more attention to the comparisons now being drawn between the two.  

And worse for Obama, after the discovery of all the clandestine (and not so legal) operations by the most dangerous of the government’s rights trampling alphabet soup of nefarious departments (NSA, IRS, FBI, DOJ, and then something called “FISA”), he now, ironically, will be thought of much more poorly than Bush, or Cheney, or any of the others, for having promised the moon, and to be so different, and so “transparent”, on the front end.  

He has fallen all the way back now, to bottom of the deep pit.   To the place where only the breaching of public trust, and in his case, blatantly so, can get you.

And just what kind of legacy will this man, Barack Obama, have now ??!!

He initially tried to paint himself in the image of John Kennedy, by way of the supposed charisma possessed.   But unlike JFK, who’s every public moment fairly oozed charisma, his was easily seen as counterfeit, ingratiating, and clearly manufactured.  

And the soaring, well-spoken oratory drew comparisons as well, even though his was so well staged, and ultimately, not very memorable.   That, compared to Kennedy, who was the best there ever was when speaking to a crowd, even though he didn’t have teleprompters to stare into vapidly.    

He would love a comparison to Martin Luther King, and has his writers construct much of his flowery rhetoric in such a way as to recall proud moments from the Great Man’s tragic past.   But unfortunately, he’s always seen as doing this for his own selfish purposes, unlike the truly giving MLK.

Obama frequently quotes Lincoln, publicly embracing his thinking, and his best lines and oratory, hoping that few in his young and mostly low information audience will remember their origin, or will think the words came straight from BHO’s own deep grey matter.   But it never comes off as genuine, and always reads bogus, if not awkward, even to a casual observer. 

He tries to imagine himself with the political skills and savvy of Bubba Clinton, and because he’s a fellow Democrat, further hopes that this nearness of affiliation will transfer these charismatic gifts to him, by default.   While also hoping that America will ignore his inadequacies and failings, as easily as they did with Bill.       Sorry Barry, not even close.  

And there are others he aspires to be, or wants to be remembered favorably as, because as we’ve now seen so openly, Obama is nothing if not manufactured, well directed, and propped up.  

So, after all these vain attempts, at nestling up close with some of American history’s greatest leaders and pure politicians, who does our current President’s picture wind up hanging beside, and rightfully so, in the peanut gallery of our 43 previous White House occupants??

None other than Richard Milhous Nixon.      Now that’s a come down. 

It’s like a rookie actor trying his best to be the next Marlon Brando or Robert DeNiro, but only being compared to Pee Wee Herman.   Or a young baseball player, hoping to be like Hank Aaron or Sandy Koufax, but only ever thought of as the San Diego chicken, or the guy in the centerfield pool, with the inner-tube around him, down at the ballpark in Texas.    

Fitting, I suppose.   And the “peter principle”, perfectly at work.   But moreso, what a shame for this country.  

To realize that Obama, who falsely promised all this Hope and Change, thinking no one was looking, nor paying any attention, could eventually combine (and cram) all the worse elements of the previous Six Presidents into his one 5 year stint (so far), is simply mind boggling.  

One could call it disappointing, or discouraging, but what did one expect??

After dozens of false starts, poor choices, and bad decisions, and a myriad of arrogant, unknowing, and uninformed efforts at all manner of executive maneuverings, aimed solely at pushing forward his strict and ill-advised agenda, and at avoiding any semblance of “preserving, protecting, or defending” our Constitution,…..and to end up in the same place as our most disgraced President, after being caught by the same failed tactics as those used 40 years ago,……

 (Joe can be reached at:  joefacinoli@gmail.com )

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© Copyright 2013, Joe Facinoli