Sounds like a man liberated from the law, the Constitution, accountability, and the faintest notion that anybody and anything can stop him in anything he wants to do, doesn't he?:
And he'd be right about that:
Barack Obama mocked what he described as a do-nothing Congress Tuesday, saying he won't apologize for taking executive actions on political issues without the legislative branch — and defiantly daring them: "So sue me."
"As long as they insist on taking no action whatsoever that will help anybody, I'm going to keep on taking actions on my own that can help the middle class, like the actions I've already taken to speed up construction projects and attract new manufacturing jobs and lift workers' wages and help students pay off their student loans," Obama told a Department of Transportation gathering on Washington's Key Bridge.
"Middle-class families can't wait for Republicans in Congress to do stuff. So sue me. As long as they're doing nothing, I'm not going to apologize for trying to do something."
Ha ha, O made a funny at John Boehner's expense. But then, it isn't the first time, either.
It's actually rather humorous that he keeps refusing to "apologize for doing my job," because what he thinks his job is and what the Founders designed the job to be are two vastly different things. Barack Obama thinks his job is to rule; to give orders and have them carried out with unquestioning, obsequious obedience; to punish any and all who cross him in the slightest; delivering long, dull, boring, tedious, tiresome, retreaded speeches that his indentured audiences will forget five minutes after they're over; and, of course, playing lots and lots and lots of golf or Galaga, depending on the season. Whatever Barry wants, Barry gets. Period. Or, as Mel Brooks put it in History Of The World Part II, "It's good to be the king".
The Founders, however, not to mention O's forty-three predecessors (to varying degrees) understood the job of President of the United States to be about leadership. And endemic to leadership is the ability to persuade - to say, "This is my vision for America; this is where I want to take the country, and here's why." In order to successfully persuade, there are a few prerequisites - humility, non-self-aggrandizing courage, and not being a jerk and a liar being chief among them. It's what makes presidential speeches "historic" - "Four score and seven years ago," "The only thing we have to fear," "Ask not what your country can do for you," "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!". Leaders lead, and most people follow, or at least are persuaded by their words, because they trust their source.
Contrast that with the last four Democrat presidents, and the first two with the latter two. LBJ was a disaster, foisting the "Great Society" and the Vietnam War on the creaking back of the country, but in the end he at least had the perspicacity to recognize when it was time to go, and didn't seek a second term. Jimmy Carter was an even bigger disaster, stripping America of the bulk of its conventional and strategic nuclear capability and leaving us vulnerable to a Soviet first strike and general global offensive, but after the Iranian hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he at least had the humility to admit that he was wrong, and regain a healthy, far from "inordinate fear of communism". They were leaders who led in the wrong direction, but they weren't total scoundrels (though Carter became one after President Nixon died).
Then there was Bill Clinton, The Big Me, an incarnated appetite, and the most personally corrupt man ever to squat in the Oval Office. His two terms accomplished nothing outside of the debasement of the office itself, the details of which oughtn't be necessary to recount, other than that they "inserted" the phrase "pearl necklace" into the pop culture lexicon. But the one other adjective that perfectly captured Sick Willie was "lucky". He came along in the wake of a giant like Ronald Reagan and lived shamelessly off of the Gipper's legacy - a roaring economy that even Mr. Bill's massive tax hike couldn't slow down very much, the post-Cold War "holiday from history," and a GOP Congress to actually run the country for him while he, er, "indulged himself". The combination of those two factors explains why he remained so inexplicably popular - he was entertaining. He was reality television before reality television existed in a time of peace and prosperity when leadership was thought to be unneeded. Even the event that ended that "holiday from history" - 9/11 - had the courtesy to hit eight months after he left office.
The primary difference between Bill Clinton and Barack Obama is that Barack Obama's corruption is political and ideological. Clinton was a lefty, but he wasn't the True Believer his wife and O are; the perqs of the job were all that mattered to him, not The Cause. Barack Obama is what we'd have gotten, and would get a continuance of, if Hillary had ever gotten, or gets to, the White House. And we see the results before us today: permanent economic depression, a world in chaos and flames, America in growing peril from without and within, and a heedless, strutting, preening, narcissistic tyrant relentless in his dishonest propaganda about how everything is fine and would be even better if it weren't for those "obstructionist" Republicans and their "stunts," which he uses to justify doubling down on his nascent despotism.
I think The One's "so sue me" taunt is more than just a passing jibe. I think it's a provocation meant to infuriate enough Republicans that John Boehner is forced to give the green light for an impeachment inquiry. Why would O want to spark his own impeachment? Simple: it would be the biggest distraction of all. It would sweep all the disastrous consequences of his misrule off TV and monitor screens, the front pages, and out of the public consciousness. It would be another campaign, aided and abetted by the media, with the "racist" GOP attempting to "lynch" the "first African-American president" for the "sole offense" of "trying to do his job for the American people". It'd be the real-life Mississippi Burning.
Just like the good old days of 2008 and 2012, in other words. And since it would nuke the prospects of big GOP midterm election gains, there'd never be any chance of a Senate trial, much less a conviction that he'd just ignore in any case, there'd be no "risk" involved.
For Barack Obama, a "constitutional crisis" is all upside and no downside. And he's showing it with every gleeful taunt.
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