It’s not difficult to understand the fall of Obama — the largest presidential drop in Gallup’s approval ratings in half a century. Just start with Obama’s overly-cocky notion that he’s exceptional and America isn’t.

Asked by a Financial Times reporter last April if he believed in American exceptionalism, Obama replied, Harvard-style: “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”

So we’ve all been kidding ourselves all these years, all these generations when people from all over the world flocked to America’s shores for something special.

In Obama’s book, there’s nothing objectively special or exceptional about America. If we didn’t exist, the Greeks could have done the job of stopping the march of Nazism and communism. Or perhaps the Brits or Kenyans could have picked up the ball.

Or maybe Obama thinks the United States was trigger happy and that Hitler, Stalin, and Mao would have turned off their bad sides if only our leaders had flashed more Colgate smiles, bowed more deeply and expressed more shame about our nation’s past slip-ups.

Obama’s always talking about education and the need for a new and better model for learning. Someone should ask him if believes in Jewish exceptionalism in regards to education, believes in Jews as a prototype to replicate (Jews make up 2/10s of 1 percent of the world’s population and 31 percent of the medicine laureates and 27 percent of the Nobel physics laureates).

I suspect that Obama would reply with something like this, something pro-leveling, an idea that mirrors his aforementioned thought on the lack of American exceptionalism:  “With learning, I believe in Puerto Rican exceptionalism, just as I believe in Palestinian extraordinariness. It’s not easy to make Puerto Rican rice and pigeon stew.”

For improvements in education, it’s a good bet that Obama would ignore what’s worked in producing exceptional numbers of laureates in medicine and just propose some feel-good resource redistribution so that various victim groups that are underrepresented in education would end up with a free ride when it comes to tuition, books and grades.

Still, even in this time of forced leveling and redistribution, there remains one type of exceptionalism and superiority that’s fine with some and that’s the elevation of Obama as incomparably exceptional.

Michelle Obama pointed to this specialness of her husband in a February 2008 speech at UCLA. “Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed,” she declared.  Barack “will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism,” that you “come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones.”

I thought the government was supposed to protect our lives, liberty and property. Where’s it said that politicians are charged with erasing our cynicism, especially when they’re the creators of much of it?

And what’s wrong with being secluded and contented? Why are our comfort zones any of Barack’s business? Remember when he said that we shouldn’t expect to “drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times” and still be treated seriously by the world’s globalists and international planners?

And remember Obama’s sky-high rhetoric on the evening of June 3, 2008, when he wrapped up his party’s nomination. Future generations, he said, would look back on that night and say “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”  It’s was like the turtles were coming out of the water and clapping in the moonlight.

The picture? A flawed America, a magical candidate, a paradigm sure to self-destruct.

Ralph R. Reiland is an associate professor of economics at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh.

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dezldummi said:

Warning: I'm a bitter gun owner clinging to my religion

March 15, 2010

Flu-Bird said:

Barack Obama the sinking ship Looks like the goods ship S.S. HOPE/CHANGE has sprung a leak and is slowly but surly sinking

March 15, 2010

Lee Gonzales said:

Teach them first about American history The spirit that prevailed among the activists in America around the time of the "separation" from England was one of non-reconcilation; the colonists expected trouble in the form of an invasion from across the pond with additional troops. They knew they were going to have to pay for their declaration to the world of the desire of independence from their bullying mother country. Most kids in school today know little of that history and for obvious reasons they have been denied to study America's early beginnings - the government schools don't want to educate their subjects that freedom in America was born in the hearts of intelligent and moral men and that the most daring and brave stepped across the line to fight for independence and side with the rare breed of men who choose liberty. Our job is to teach them the side of history that the government schools don't dare teach. Teaching via slogans and braggadocia won't get cut it.

March 15, 2010

Jim said:

... The public schools were founded to teach the student religion, ground them in moral values, instill patriotism, and to give them the basic knowledge and skills to get through life with. The schools have degenerated into officially atheistic entities that have become completely unhinged from nearly everything they were put in place for. Emphasis on music, sex and football isn't going to get young people very far. How sad the federal government has hijacked the educational system. And sadder still that we don't trust the government on many issues, but we allow them to dictate the educational standards and curriculum to our children almost without question. What we really need is a separation of school and state.

March 15, 2010

Henry Brown said:

Approval ratings Good article and some points well made. It is precisely because of the Obaminable Hussein and his fellow travelers that America is so unexceptional. The more the free market is strangled and our rights are trampled, the closer they get to their goal of making America "more like other countries." It's really not the land of opportunity any more, except for illegal aliens, foreign industrialists and professional politicians like the Obaminable Hussein. (Oh, I forgot about overpaid, underworked government bureaucrats.) And they won't be satisfied until there's nothing left here that draws even third-worlders to our shores. Change. Yes, we can. The people have spoken. Forgive me for sounding like Chicken Little, but remember Clinton's approval rating was dwindling during his first term, too. There's still plenty of time before the next presidential election, and if the GOP nominates another Bob Dole, Hannibal Lecter could win in a(n electoral college) landslide. I fear if Sarah Palin were president, we'd merely have a third installment of the Bush Dynasty. Meanwhile, during the Congressional election, voting in more Newt Gingrichniks might give rise to some stirring rhetoric, but the Socialist Strangulation Machine will trample on.

March 16, 2010 | url