Obama Destroys The Image Of Government

http://leomcneil.net/2014/10/17/obama-destroys-the-image-of-government/ ^ | October 17, 2014 | Leo McNeil 

President Obama believes in big government. He truly believes that government is best able to decide the great issues of the day. He’s expanded government like no other President since LBJ in the 60’s. Obamacare alone is the biggest government program since the Great Society. Obama has added nearly $8 trillion in new debt. Yet for all of Obama’s belief in big government, his administration has done more to hurt the image of government than any administration since Nixon. In that, the damage Nixon did was about corruption at the top. With Obama the damage he is doing is to the image of government as even a remotely capable entity is massive. On one issue after another government is showing itself to be incompetent and incapable. It goes well beyond Obama, it goes to the rank and file bureaucrats as well.
The latest hit on government credibility is the Ebola “crisis.” Yours truly will be the first one to tell everyone to calm down about Ebola. However the government agency Centers For Disease Control (CDC) is so incompetent that they’re actually making the Ebola problem worse. Practically the entire country is screaming for a travel ban from West Africa. The CDC so far refuses, claiming that shutting down travel would destroy West African economies. Because of course Ebola on its own isn’t doing that. Meanwhile the CDC is wasting millions on nonsense nutrition programs and not setting up global health facilities like Congress directed them to. They’re also haven’t been spending money on Ebola research. They whine they don’t have enough money but Congress recently gave them more money than the Obama administration asked for. The CDC looks utterly clueless when it comes to Ebola, they appear to have no idea what they’re doing.
This is a common theme among government under Obama. Just last year, after four years of planning, the government couldn’t get the Obamacare website up and running. It took them months to work out all the kinks. People who depended upon the website to buy insurance were either unable to buy a policy or unable to confirm that they bought a policy. It was a complete nightmare that took months to fix. Arguably there are still security problems with the Obamacare website today. Can you imagine a for profit business having these problems with a website. Only government could spend years on something as basic as a website and mess it all up. Of course, no one was actually blamed for the problem. All the bureaucrats blamed each other.
Do people still believe that anyone in government has a clue with regards to the middle east? ISIS is on the brink of attacking Baghdad, Syria’s Assad is still in power despite Obama’s red line, Afghanistan continues to be a problem. Meanwhile the government refuses to secure our border and ISIS members and other terrorists are free to enter at will. Benghazi itself is evidence of government incompetence, help was asked for and no one in government was willing to provide assistance despite it being readily available. The President slept, the Secretary of State did nothing. We’re lobbing bombs into Syria, to attack ISIS which is the same organization we were going to support last year in opposing Assad. Now our bombs aid Assad. The problem here isn’t just that Obama flip flops and his foreign policy vision is poor at best. The problem is much deeper than this, it’s a problem of bureaucracy.
The Obama administration has given us no reason to trust that government can solve problems. If you’re a liberal, you must be very disappointed in the way this administration has gone. Obama hasn’t simply failed to deliver on the laundry list of promises he made in 2008. He’s discredited government in the process. If you believe in the ability of government to solve problems and if you believe government is more capable than the private sector, the Obamacare website alone has to enrage you. This fiasco alone has done a lot of damage to the image of government. To say nothing of the inability of anyone within the administration to make decisions when decisions have to be made. Liberals must be very disappointed in how Obama has governed.
The question going forward is whether the Republicans are willing to attack big government heading into 2016. Will a Ronald Reagan run and win the nomination. Reagan argued for smaller government because bureaucracy doesn’t work. Government does not have all the answers and isn’t the best source for solutions. Certainly men like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz will make these arguments. However the GOP has a history of nominating men like Mitt Romney and the Bush’s who argue that the Democrats are simply incompetent managers of government. If only they were in office, government would be run more efficiently. They tell at least half of the truth concerning Obama. He is an incompetent manager. However the Bush, 43, administration suggests that Republicans managing big government is only marginally more efficient. In reality, the Bush 43 administration incompetently rolled out the Rx drug program. The problem isn’t governmental efficiency, it’s competence and ability. Government does not have all the answers and its solutions usually make matters worse. The Republicans have a solid argument against big government heading into 2016. They’ll have an electorate willing to listen after eight years of big government and big spending. Don’t waste your money betting the GOP takes advantage though. Their track record speaks for itself.