What Is Obama’s Foreign Policy?

Ukraine appears to be on the brink of war. This after Russia more or less took Crimea and is staging anti-Ukrainian demonstrations in the eastern part of the country. Obama’s response to all of this has been economic sanctions on seven Russians and lofty rhetoric about the world’s position or something. In Syria, our President’s red line was ignored. The President’s response was to make threats and back down. Obama supported the Arab Spring in Egypt and cheered when the Muslim Brotherhood overthrew a long time ally. He has since done nothing despite his pals in the Brotherhood being thrown out of power. In Libya, terrorists murdered our ambassador and the President’s response is to lie about why they did it and then do absolutely nothing.

Looking at Obama’s foreign policy it’s easy to wonder what exactly his foreign policy is. The President seems to react to world situations and his reactions usually aren’t very good. Obama portrays a certain weakness unusual for an American President. He retreats to following “world” opinion rather than trying to shape world opinion. He doesn’t have any noteworthy  foreign policy successes. Not even with countries such as Venezuela which boasts the sort of socialism Obama seems to like. Obama hasn’t achieved peace in the middle east or even moved things in that direction. Syria, Ukraine and Egypt have been abject policy failures.

Obama rarely talks about foreign policy unless he’s reacting to an event. He never comes right out and says what is overriding foreign policy objective is. Woodrow Wilson was quite clear what his objective was when he tried to push the League of Nations. FDR was equally clear when he demanded unconditional surrender and a United Nations. Eisenhower and Kennedy were clear when they demanded communist containment. Reagan was clear in his desire to collapse the Soviet Union and eliminate nuclear weapons from the Earth. There isn’t any question as to what Bush 43’s foreign policy was.

So what exactly is Obama’s? He never quite comes out and says what his end game is. Surely the smartest man ever to live in the White House has an overall foreign policy goal that he’s trying to move the nation towards. What it is never seems to be stated. Obama always appears to be reacting, which gives him the aura of foreign policy incompetence. Because he always appears to be reacting to world events, Obama always seems like he doesn’t quite have a point. He comes off like he’s speaking off the cuff. This of course requires us to think the best of President Obama.

There is of course another theory on Obama’s foreign policy that must be discussed. Before becoming President Obama seemed to want American power abroad limited. He wanted our influence curtailed, especially in the middle east. The people he has surrounded himself with throughout his life think America is the problem child in the world. With this theory in mind, his refusal to issue any meaningful economic sanctions against Russia makes sense. His half asked effort to sanction seven Russians was only worth a headline in the papers to appease Americans. His backtracking in Syria demonstrated to the world the sort of weakness Obama wants for America. His decision to follow the French in Libya makes more sense, as does his willingness to throw long time allies under the best. It all demonstrates a weaker America in the world.

Most Americans don’t want to think this way about their President. It’s much preferable to believe Obama is incompetent or a good meaning but naive man. However in looking at Obama’s five plus years in office, it’s hard to believe incompetence and naivety are completely responsible. Especially so when you look at the socialist cast of characters around the President. He keeps company with the likes of Valerie Jarrett who believes America is the problem, to say nothing of others over the years. The problem with Obama isn’t that he holds this position, it’s that he refuses to articulate it so the public can judge it for themselves. Rather than strongly arguing his case, Obama doesn’t trust the public or its response.

Why Kathleen Sebelius Won’t Lose Her Job

Kathleen Sebelius testified before Congress today. Amusingly the Obamacare website crashed moments before her testimony. You almost knew that was going to happen. Sebelius went forward with her absurd contention that the website has never crashed. Guffaws and chortles could be heard across the country. Sebelius is the sacrificial lamb, though not one who will be fired by Obama. It’s clear her handling of the website has been a disaster. For her to blame contractors is ridiculous. It’s her job to oversee the project, she didn’t do her job. If she didn’t pay attention to the construction of the all important exchange website, what else was Sebelius not paying attention to?

Perhaps Sebelius was paying closer attention to the actual insurance end of things. If so, she’s been doing the President’s bidding but not the American people’s. You’ll recall Obama told us we would be able to keep our insurance. In fact, the Obamacare law has a section that says if we had a policy in place on the March 23rd 2010 that we could keep it so long as there weren’t any changes. Sebelius was sure to pass regulations which would cause this grandfather status to be waived if premiums were increased. She also passed regulations forcing insurance companies to change these policies. In effect, the grandfather status was and always has been non-existent thanks to regulations passed by Sebelius.

Valerie Jarrett has been running around claiming that the Obamacare law didn’t cause these cancellations but rather big insurers are the ones canceling policies. The only reason why insurers are cancelling policies is because the Federal government is forcing them to add provisions to health insurance policies. But for the actions of the government, Sebelius in particular, no one would be receiving a cancellation letter. There would be no reason for an insurer to cancel a policy, they would simply keep selling a grandfathered policy at a lower than Obamacare price.

That’s the kicker though, Obamacare can’t afford to have grandfathered policies holding back potential exchange customers. These grandfathered policies offer better prices and services more tailored to individual needs. Obamacare’s policies are essentially one size fits all. You have three to choose from with little variation within each of the three levels of coverage. The grandfathered policies, in fact all pre-Obamacare policies, offer all sorts of coverages that can be tailored to individual needs or demands. You can see why the Obama administration has to get rid of the grandfathered plans, they would hold back potential exchange customers and destroy the program. As such, Sebelius destroyed the grandfathered policies via regulation.

This is why Obama will not fire Sebelius. While she’s been proven utterly incompetent in overseeing the website, as a regulator she’s done exactly what Obama has asked of her. Couple that with the fact that Obama can’t afford a prolonged and contentious Senate confirmation battle over any Sebelius replacement and it’s clear Sebelius is here to stay. This is why Obama is hanging Sebelius out to dry right now. PR wise, for Sebelius it won’t get any worse than today. The media and general public won’t pay close attention to her regulatory achievements for the administration and thus they won’t notice the real damage she’s done to the healthcare industry. Obama knew he was lying when he said you could keep your insurance because he knew Kathleen Sebelius would write regulations to make sure you couldn’t. For that she won’t lose her job.

Is Obama Clueless Or A Liar?

Does Obama know about anything happening in his administration? It seems to be a reoccurring theme that Obama has no idea what’s going on within his own administration. He had no idea the IRS was targeting conservative groups even though the head of the IRS was at the White House 150+ times. He had no idea what was going on in Benghazi even though the situation room was being used. He knows nothing about Fast and Furious, DOJ subpoenas or anything associated with the NSA. Obama knew nothing about the pending disaster of the Obamacare website and no doubt will be shocked to discover the middle class can no longer afford health insurance.

The latest example of Obama having no idea what his administration is doing comes from the NSA. Our government has been spying on allied leaders, including leaders in Germany, France and Mexico. The NSA has told us Obama had no idea they were tracking foreign leaders. We’re told that the President doesn’t “sign off” on such spying. We learned last week that the NSA tracked 70 million calls per month in France, this week we discover the NSA is tracking 60 million Spanish language calls every month.

Does anyone believe that the President doesn’t know anything about the NSA spying on foreign leaders? We’re basically stuck with two possible choices when evaluating Obama and the NSA foreign spy scandal. The President is either completely clueless about what goes on in his administration or he’s a liar. If Obama is clueless, it means he either doesn’t ask the right questions or willfully doesn’t ask. We essentially have this problem with Obama throughout his term. He consistently seems surprised by what happens within his administration. The NSA spooks are just the latest example, there are at least a half a dozen others. The IRS scandal, for example, was known by the White House weeks before it became public yet Obama acted as though he had no idea until he read about it in the paper. Is he really clueless?

On one hand Obama being clueless makes sense. Before becoming President Obama had never run anything in his life. He’s never owned a business and was never elected to a position that required executive management such as Mayor or Governor. He had never served within a previous Presidential or gubernatorial administration. He has no idea how to manage in an executive manner and he came into the White House as a know it all who had everything figured out already. He’s arrogance prevents him from learning from others, much less his own mistakes. In his five  years in office, has Obama fired anyone?

On the other hand it’s almost unbelievable that the President doesn’t know that the NSA is tracking Angela Merkel or dozens of other allied leaders. After five years, how does Obama not know this is happening? Is he not asking the right questions or is Valerie Jarrett preventing the President from meeting with the people to whom the right questions may be asked? Is Obama simply uninterested governing and thus leaving agencies to do as they please while he plots the end of the Republican Party?

It would hardly be surprising that the NSA, CIA or some other agency is keeping tabs on foreign leaders, including allies. That sort of intelligence gathering is almost to be expected. More concerning is the mass data mining of foreign business leaders. Having said that, why is it a surprise to Obama that his government is tracking Merkel? After five years as President, Obama has no idea his government, the one he leads, is tracking foreign leaders. Has he never been provided with the intelligence reports? Has he never used those reports for strategic advantage when meeting with these leaders? What happens to these reports? Surely they aren’t filed away somewhere for no one to look at. The alternative of course is that Obama has known all along about the spying and is lying about not knowing about it. If this is the case we should ask ourselves why the President wants to look like a clueless aloof fool on the world stage.