Are Conservatives Being Fair to President Obama?

Daily, conservative media outlets spend incredible amounts of column inches and air time criticizing President Barack Obama and his administration.

Conservatives hammer Obama for irresponsible and harmful fiscal, spending, military, social, regulatory, labor, education and foreign policies.
Is such disparagement reasonable?

Sure, those are all in worse shape than when the president took office, but everyone’s human. Conservatives should occasionally cut Obama some slack, right?
Reflect upon Grey’s Law: "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice," and the law’s variously-attributed corollary, "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence."
President Obama has much to answer for.

Obamacare, a law he and Democrats schemed and obfuscated about through passage and the president’s reelection is a disaster. America’s barely-discernible economic growth cannot accommodate job-seekers. Unimaginably, the national debt has skyrocketed nearly $7 trillion – more than 60 percent — in only five years. Food and fuel prices remain high, and the housing market is still poor.
To enable $7 trillion in deficit spending, the Federal Reserve authorized several rounds of "quantitative easing," a euphemism for printing astonishing amounts of unsecured money, to buy back, or monetize our own debt. The Fed continues to pump currency at the rate of $40 billion or more per month, while keeping interest rates artificially low.

All that new liquidity cheapens our currency, inflates commodity prices, food and fuel among them, drives a stock market bubble and threatens hyper-inflation.
Unemployment remains high — nearly 14 percent when counting those who have abandoned hope of finding work. Welfare is expanding, and record numbers receive food stamps. Entitlement commitments for federally-mandated Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are unsustainable, yet the administration resists reforms.
In 2009, Obama’s massive, unsuccessful "stimulus" was peddled as a way to keep unemployment under 8 percent. When the number exceeded 10 percent, the administration moved the goalposts, telling America that the effects of the stimulus would improve the job picture by 2010-mid-2011.

But the rate of unemployment increased again in May and June 2011, at the same time earlier, rosier Labor Department job numbers were discounted.
Obama inherited but unnecessarily extended difficult economic times. He and Washington Democrats have enacted tax increases and doubled down on fiscal and monetary policies that have prolonged recessionary conditions.

Things in America are far worse than the government will admit.

As the White House and House Republicans faced off over spending authorization and raising the debt ceiling, the president obstinately urged congressional Republicans to roll over. Enough big-government, establishment Republican pigeons complied – but, fortunately, the spending sequester which has somewhat reduced the annual deficit was preserved.

Spending cuts, tax and entitlement reform aren’t factors in Obama’s calculus. According to Democrats, what’s needed is more spending – that, and political cover from compliant Republicans, of course.

Indeed, with support from Republican House appropriators, the Murray/Ryan budget deal foolishly breaks the current legislated spending caps for an easily reversed "agreement" and squanders the only leverage Republicans have with even more profligate Democrats.

If they wish to extend their House majority and win the Senate and White House, Republicans must insist on spending responsibility, effectively present their case to the people and allow the elections of 2014 and 2016 to settle the dispute.

Obama enters policy disputes late when he steps in at all. He wishes to be seen as above politics, messianic, faultless and blameless, an intellectual man of compassion facing ideological enemies – invariably anonymous straw men – alone.
But, Obama’s approval ratings are underwater and sinking. To most Americans, the president is no longer a sympathetic figure. Among Obama’s greatest problems is that his results have destroyed many Americans’ initial confidence in his honesty and intelligence.

So, viewed through the lens of Grey’s Law, if Obama possesses the intellect with which his remaining supporters credit him, and if there is a True North from which he takes his political bearings, a reasonable case can be made for willful malice, even lawlessness, in Obama’s executive decisions and policy pursuits.
Yet, other than campaigning, Obama has little real-world experience and no discernible record of accomplishment. And we can be certain that his academic records are sealed for good reason.

Considering Grey’s choices in characterizing Obama — malice or incompetence — the most persuasive case includes a combination of those attributes, both of which are unacceptable in the Oval Office.

http://www.pennlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2013/12/are_conservatives_being_fair_to_president_obama_jerry_shenk.html#incart_flyout_opinion