Great Vocal Majority Podcast Volume 72: Obama vs Trump

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Great Vocal Majority Podcast

News & Politics


PRESIDENTS OBAMA AND TRUMP: SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES Let's start with Barack Obama. To begin with, he's not really an American. I don't mean to say he was born in Kenya. I don't believe that. I am referring to his life experiences. They are uniquely NON AMERICAN. He's got almost nothing in common with Americans of any stripe. He's biracial, identifies as black, but his life growing up has almost nothing in common with blacks Americans outside of his skin tone. Obama grew up as a "red diaper baby." That is, his parents were either communists or radical socialists. He lived in Hawaii and Indonesia for much of his formative years and when he lived in the continental United States, from age 11 to 18, he was mentored by Frank Marshall Davis. Davis was a man so dangerous, the FBI had him on a roundup list of Soviet sympathizing communist subversives. By contrast, Donald Trump grew up in an upper middle class Queens home of a New York real estate developer. From all accounts, Trump had a more or less typical childhood: brash, a bit rebellious, enough for his parents to place him in a military academy. Unlike Obama, Trump was not surrounded by anti-American radicals into adulthood. Ever since he was a public figure, Trump has always been an outspoken critic of the failures of government to live up to it most basic obligations. Prior to becoming President, Obama was also critical of government, but for other reasons. Obama believed government failed to assume enough obligations and thus spoke out strongly for a more activist government. In other words, Trump believed the government wasn't adequately fulfilling its obligations it has already assumed, whereas Obama wanted government to assume new obligations it has not yet taken. When assessing their capacity for sympathy or empathy, Obama was often far more inclined to display it for people who aren't Americans. He regularly blamed past and current policies of the United States for many of the world's problems. On those occasions when he demonstrated empathy for Americans, it often took on a divisive tone, as in "if I had a son, he would look like Trayvon", or "if you have a business, you didn't build that." Trump was not apologetic to foreign audiences for past or current policies. Rather, if he was apologetic at all, it was to Americans for the failure of political leadership that created those policies. Policies, which often, as in the case of trade agreements, took its toll on working and middle class employment and incomes. When speaking to foreign audiences, rather than apologize for American policy, Trump was bold. He acted as an advocate for America, reminding our allies in no uncertain terms what America was doing for them and whether those allies were living up to their obligations to us. This was such a radical departure from Obama and previous Presidents, it had to be jarring to other national leaders. The media elites are endlessly fascinated by both men in opposite ways. Obama's treatment was so mild, that the one news outlet which covered his Presidency with a note of skepticism, Fox News, was painted by the Obama Administration as "agenda driven" and "anti-Obama." But it's hard to argue that the media didn't have a virtual love affair with Obama and his Presidency. Both Obama's appeared regularly on entertainment programs and had one softball interview after another. Barack Obama was extremely sensitive to media criticism on those rare occasions he got it. Despite boasting of having the most "open and transparent administration in history", Obama hid more from the media than any President since the Founding. More FOIA requests were denied or delayed under Obama. More whistle blowers, leakers and journalists were surveiled or jailed under Obama. Maybe Obama was treated by the media with great deference, but he didn't return the favor. Still, in aggregate, the media adored him. The contrast with the media treatment of Donald Trump is painful. It is 180 degrees opposite of Obama's. Certainly Trump's behavior in office can fairly account for some of the difference. Trump is given to exaggeration, embellishment, misstatements and untruthful comments in the same way as is just about every other politician. For his entire public life, however, Trump has been known to speak in superlatives much in the manner of a pitch man. This is where the news media began to show its open disdain for Trump. When Trump was elected, the economy responded positively almost immediately. Obama and Clinton supporting economists such as Paul Krugman and Steven Rattner had predicted the economy would "crash and NEVER recover." The news media immediately leaped to credit Obama for the economic turnaround, despite failing to point out any policy accounting for it. What should have been obvious to any impartial observer was the country had just elected the most vociferously pro-business President in its history. Obama and his presumed successor, Clinton could never be characterized as pro-business. That anticipated change in direction is what accounts for the immediate turnaround in both markets and economic indicators. The problem was, the news media really took it on the chin with the Trump victory and were staggered by it. They lost face and continue to lose it because the videos of them dismissing Donald Trump as a potential President will live on forever. Since his election, the same media outlets who thought Trump's candidacy was a joke, are now treating his presidency as if it were a crime. Their treatment of Trump is driven as much by an attempt to recover a loss of reputation, as much as it is partisan politics. For, if the situation were reversed and Trump were the heavy favorite and Hillary Clinton won in a surprise, it's hard to imagine the media reacting to the win quite the way they have with Trump. Some in the Washington, D.C. media elites were perpetually perplexed and bewildered by Obama's behavior in office, judging him by a standard of governing set by his predecessors, which Obama clearly rejected. Obama sensed that a vast part of the media was willing to give him broad latitude. This enabled him to exceed his constitutional guardrails without consequence in the Congress and outside of Fox News, scarcely a whisper of protest. Obama overrode his authority with War Powers, bombing more countries than any President since the second world war. He rewrote black letter law on no less than 36 occasions with Obamacare. He exceeded his authority with the DACA EO and on many other occasions. All while doing this, especially during his first term, the media kept waiting for Obama to "track to the middle." He never did because he wasn't a centrist any more than Joe Stalin was a centrist compared to Leon Trotsky. Obama came to office promising change and he did it by growing government, making it more activist, more centralized, far more powerful over the lives of average Americans than ever before. Donald Trump also confounds the Washington elites, but in a different way. Obama was there to drive change by empowering the central planners in Washington. Trump was elected to do precisely the opposite: disrupt their power. From the very start, Trump sought to pull back the reins on the centralized Washington power structure. He sought to accomplish this by eliminating regulations. Regulations are how the permanent government, ie., the federal bureaucracies exert their control over our way of life. This is not to say that all regulations are bad or that we should live in a regulation free environment. To Trump's way of thinking, regulations are a last resort, not the first option. Obama and the central planners suffer from a fatal conceit: that regulations are ALWAYS needed and it's always better to err on the side of having more than less. The Obama approach to regulatory authority has led to bureaucratic abuses resulting in nearly two dozen unanimous Supreme Court decisions against the Obama Administration, striking down such abuses. Barack Obama and Donald Trump may be diametrical opposites on the political spectrum. Their treatment by the media may be as different as black from white. But they are similar in ways, as well. Both are change agents, but for very different visions of America. The Obama vision for America, is one of a very left socialist agenda. His idea of America would demand less individual liberty. Obama's view is that of radical egalitarianism where outcomes are determined by group identity. As a leftist, Obama sees Americans as a collection of tribes: in race: the white tribe, the black tribe, the asian tribe, the latino tribe, the native american tribe and on and on. This tribal view exists in all areas of life: economics, religion, and sexual orientation. Obama sees history as having created a preexisting condition advantaging a minority over a majority, necessitating government prescriptions to correct. The fact these prescriptions have been tried elsewhere and have failed miserably doesn't dissuade the committed leftist at all. That's Obama. The Trump vision for America is quite different. Trump rejects the division of Americans along tribal lines. He believes that most of the problems in the country today have been caused by policies that don't accomplish what they were ostensibly set out to do. In other words, government has made itself the problem. In Trump's view, the best thing government can do is to first get out of the way of the People. This is manifested through reducing taxes and regulations, renegotiating trade agreements, holding allies and foes accountable and securing the border. Trump seems to believe in America to a greater degree than Obama, who has been accused of believing in a managed decline of the United States. Trump believes if America leveraged all of our natural resources in the right way, the United States would remain the world's leading economy, technological and military power well into the forseeable future and beyond. There does seem to be much evidence proving him to be correct. What is the moral of the story here? Well, it's simple. Donald Trump REALLY DOES believe in America. He sees this country as the greatest and most unique country in all of human history. He is an American exceptionalist. Barack Obama, on the other hand, believes more in his ideology than he does in America. He doesn't hate America, but he doesn't love it either. He sees us as having a largely unearned reputation, with power, wealth and influence greater than we ought to have. Obama is a GLOBALIST. So, that is really what all this Trump bashing is all about. Much of the DC establishment is about the international Left pushing for a GLOBALIST agenda, that will look a great deal like the USSR or Communist China to the average person, should it ever happen.