the rightwing czar

Barack Obama is a liar – except don’t call him that because it might be “unfair” – even though he lied over and over again.

IT ISN’T QUITE FAIR to call Barack Obama a liar. During the campaign he carefully avoided committing to much of anything important that he might have to take back later. For now, I won’t quibble with The St. Petersburg Times’s Obamameter, which so far has the president keeping 30 promises and breaking only six.

And yet, broadly speaking, Obama has been lying on a pretty impressive scale. You just have to get past his grandiloquent rhetoric — usually empty of substance — to get a handle on it. I offer a short, incomplete list, which I’m sure others could easily enlarge.

Amongst the lies that John MacArthur details in his piece are his lie about being the anti-war candidate, his lie about ending corruption in Washington, and his lie about wanting to end NAFTA. Despite going into excellent detail about the many faces of Barack, MacArthur thinks it’s “unfair” to call him a liar. I’m sorry, did we come up with a new word for someone that habitually says things that aren’t true?

I guess one way to look at it is to say that deep in his heart Obama meant everything he said on the campaign trail and he would like to make those things come true if it weren’t for the messy reality that comes with being the President of the United States. Sure, he wants to end the war and he meant everything he said about bringing all our troops home, but he didn’t realize that his plans really weren’t realistic – or even feasible.

And maybe he really did want to dismantle NAFTA in exchange for “fairer” trade practices, but when he took on the role of President, he realized you can’t just cut off two of your geographically closest trading allies without consequences.

But isn’t that exactly the point we made during the campaign? Obama might have a lot of “good ideas,” but good ideas are often spoiled by harsh reality – a reality that Obama really didn’t know very well from his little experience as a state senator and four years of almost inactive service in the U.S. Senate.

So maybe MacArthur is right. It’s unfair to label Obama a liar. He’s just naive and inexperienced. Now where have I heard that before?

Posted in Foreign policy, Iraq, Obama

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