The Age of Incompetence Chapter 49

KENNEWICK, WA It might be bad form but when you're right you earn the right to say so and when you're wrong you're obliged to eat your words. What seems an eternity ago I began writing what I thought at the time should have been obvious: we sent a boy to Washington to do a man's job. I began on January 30, 2009 in my essay Wanted: one tough hombre. I followed it up with The Titanic Revisited on February 11, 2009. Next I wrote The New Untouchable on March 7, 2009. Finally on March 21, 2009 A Few Words from the Bear.

The theme of all of these was that there seemed to me something seriously wrong with both the message coming out of the Obama Whitehouse and the actions. It was as if Bush had never left only it was covered over with syrupy rhetoric. I felt that somebody like the late Bear Bryant, the legendary Alabama football coach, should sit down and have a chat with Mr. Obama.

At the end I closed with these words:
"Obama has wasted precious time trying to convert his opponents in Congress, the very same ones who brought about this economic disaster. The Bear would have quietly slipped Obama an old Arkansas homily, "Never try to teach a pig to sing, it wastes your time and annoys the pig."
Obama could have learned a lot from the Bear, but not about football, but about how to be a man and succeed in war. Obama obviously needs it, but more importantly, the American people need it because the war is still being lost. The AIG scam revealed how the attack on America from within continues.
"Be good or be gone." was one of Bear Bryant's most famous mottos. This is what I would like to tell Obama, and the whole political class in Washington. But I would not whisper it softly with a friendly hand on their shoulder. I would say it the way Harry Truman said it to Gen. Douglas McArthur. Then maybe team America could win this war. If we don't, quite simply, America will cease to be America. That´s what this war is all about

Bear Bryant

Bear Bryant: "Be good or be gone."

Now two years later, at the half way point in Obama's term, it is clear both by economic numbers and by the more important metrics that can't be plotted by numbers, the spiritual health of the nation, Obama has failed team America.

He has over and over to the point of futility and absurdity tried to teach the pigs to sing. Millions of Americans have been out of work for over two years. Millions have lost their homes. Millions more have lost whatever health insurance they had. Meanwhile back on Park Avenue the fat cats are celebrating with their bank and stock bonuses. And Obama invites them to play on his team!

And all the while obscene amounts of money are being sunk in rat holes called Iraq and Afghanistan. Money that is being borrowed from China.

In the beginning when I was writing my warnings that we sent a boy to do a man's job, the apologists for Obama merely said, "He's got a master plan you just don't understand." Later the chorus said, "You didn't expect him to clean up the Bush mess that it took years to create in just a year, did you?" Always there was some excuse to ignore the obvious: Obama simply lacked the DNA to confront the evil and corruption that was called Washington, D.C. The fact is every great president in the 20th century became great because they accepted the challenge to face up to evil and corruption. Teddy Roosevelt did it when he faced up to and broke up the trusts that were strangling America. Franklin Roosevelt did it when he faced up to the banksters and Wall Street grifters who brought about the Great Depression. Harry Truman did it so often that it became common place from the atomic bomb decision to the Marshall Plan to the Berlin Airlift to the Korean invasion to Gen. McArthur trying to bluff him on the chain of command issue. John Kennedy called the bluff of the steel industry and fired the head of the CIA when he was sold a bill of goods on the Bay of Pigs. He also showed his steel in the Cuban Missile Crisis with the Russians.

All of them also understood another thing that Bear Bryant understood. Again I quote from the first essay: "Then he (Bryant) would have continued and told the president (Obama) as he told so many others, ‘People who are in it for their own good are individualists. They don't share the same heartbeat that makes a team so great. A great unit, whether it be football or any organization, shares the same heartbeat."

Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, shared the same heartbeat as team America and that allowed them to intuitively know when to speak softly and carry a big stick and when there was a need for more than words to enforce the rule of law even to the mighty and the powerful instead of pandering to them as Team Obama has.

Some years ago I read a quote from the Hall of Fame NFL player Jim Brown about the boxing champion Muhammad Ali: "The bottom line is that Muhammad Ali always stood for what was right. He was born with that. He had a warrior's heart when he was born...He has a love not just for black people, but for all good people...The strongest warriors are those strong from the inside, not from their physical strength. You don't become a warrior because of your occupation. You become a warrior in your soul. Ali didn't let his occupation curtail his soul."

No truer words were ever spoken. In a time when America was at rock bottom both economically and spiritually from the long years of the Bush Gang when the Constitution was gutted, a fake war was promoted with bald lies, and then the entire financial system was pillaged by greed, the times called for a warrior to restore the system and the spiritual heart of a nation. It called for far more than a speech maker. But America got a speech maker in its hour of need.

I believe after two years at Alabama, if Obama was a player, the Bear would have called a conference with him and as gently as he could said, "Son, here at Alabama we expect to produce champions as players and champions as a team. We don't want individualists who talk big but don't play big. Everybody has to beat with one heart. You don't have that team heart and I think you'd better transfer to another school, because you can't play here anymore." It was the be good or be gone principle that the Bear preached and lived by. Truthfully I doubt Obama would have lasted more than a year under the Bear let alone two years.

In a perfect world Obama would resign after this term. But he won't because he's in it for Team Obama not Team America. In a Frank Capra world of Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, some American with a warrior spirit, like Jimmy Stewart, would step forward and challenge Obama. If not America as my generation knew it is dead. Then tribes like the Tea Party, which the Obama drift created, will pick over the bones of the carcass like hyenas. In fact, the process has already begun or haven't you noticed?

Hyenas always select the weakest first and we see that now in America where the rich and powerful are circling the weakest among us. It gives new meaning to silence of the lambs. (1,304)