largely from President Obama’s recurring personal pathology: Premature Capitulation.
Timid incrementalism during an economic crisis requiring bold structural reform doomed the economy to continued stagnation, high unemployment, and negative growth. (Do the math: of the current official 2% annual GDP growth rate fully 1.4% come from the ballooning of business inventories-i.e., stuff that isn’t moving off the shelves. The annual population growth rate in the U.S. is close to 1%. Hence the current net growth rate is realistically a negative .4% (a real .6% growth rate minus the rate of population growth)–not much of a “recovery” to brag about.
As we learned from Bob Woodward, Obama was has been consistently defied and politically outmaneuvered by the military high command. General McChrystal’s staff obviously went too far over the line in its public defiance of civilian authority, but Admiral Mullen and General Petraeus continue to outflank any inclination Obama might have to reduce our investment in strategic singholes and endless occupations in a global Forever War.
Obama, who certainly knows a thing or two about the Constitution, has failed to curb the excesses of an increasingly Orwellian national security state. Warrantless wiretapping lubricated by routinely issued “national security letters” is the norm. The Obama Administration, just like the Bush Administration, claims the right to kidnap (render) and imprison suspects indefinitely without charge or trial. Even beyond the Bush practice, the Obama Administration claims the right to assassinate U.S. citizens without indictment, trial, or even any kind of judicial review, as in the alAwlaki case. This is a record on civil liberties and Constitutional protections even worse than that of George W. Bush or Richard Nixon.
-Obama and his