Obama The ‘Sophomore’ President

When most people hear the word ‘Sophomore‘ they think of a student in their second year of college or high school. A common understanding of the word ‘Sophomore’ conveys the idea of one who has a little education and knowledge but foolishly thinks he knows more than he actually does.

Merriam Webster’s definition of the related word ‘Sophomoric’ is: “conceited and overconfident of knowledge but poorly informed and immature.”

Which brings us to President Obama. In the attached video clip, Peter Robinson asks author, economist, and social commentator Thomas Sowell about Obama. Keep in mind Sowell’s comments were made in 2008 before Obama was elected.

Sowell’s analysis of Obama is trenchant:

 “When he says “I will change the world” you realize this is a man who actually accomplished *nothing*, other than advancing his career through rhetoric…it reminds me of a Sophomore in college who thinks he can run the world because he’s never had to run anything, and you can believe that only until you have personal responsibility for consequences, and that’s when it gives you a little bit of humility.”

http://www.tubechop.com/watch/2925524

From Jodi Kantor’s book ‘The Obama’s’, page 66:

“Obama had always had a high estimation of his ability to cast and run his operation. When David Plouffe, his campaign manager, first interviewed for a job with him in 2006, the senator gave him a warning: “I think I could probably do every job on the campaign better than the people I’ll hire to do it,” he said. “It’s hard to give up control when that’s all I’ve known.” Obama said nearly the same thing to Patrick Gaspard, whom he hired to be the campaign’s political director. “I think I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters” Obama told him. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.”

Obama is now in the sixth year of his presidency and his hubris and attendant failures have caught up to him. The implementation of his signature legislation, ObamaCare, has been described as a “trainwreck” by a senator in his own party. Obama was awarded PolitiFact’s 2013 ‘Lie of the Year’ for his “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period” whopper.

Candidate Obama scolded President Bush for his big spending, calling it “unpatriotic”, but President Obama added $5.3 trillion to the national debt in four years, compared to Bush’s $4.9 trillion in eight years.

Obama’s foreign policy disasters are numerous: His ‘leading from behind’ left Libya a failed state where Islamist terrorists have a place to plot attacks in the region and beyond. His “drawing a red line” in Syria in regard to the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons then backing away from it sent the thugs of the world an unmistakable signal of weakness and emboldened them.

His decision to remove a residual force of troops in Iraq in 2011, as recommended by his military advisors, was rejected so he could campaign in 2012 that he “ended the war in Iraq” which in turn created the power vacuum that allowed the Islamist totalitarians of ISIS to take over a large portion of land in northern Iraq/eastern Syria and establish an Islamic Caliphate.

His ‘Reset’ with Russia is a hollow mockery with Putin sensing Obama’s indecisiveness, leading to Putin invading Ukraine and annexing Crimea.

By any reasonable standard, the record of this president is one of failure.

Will Obama learn from his mistakes? If past performance is the best indication of future results, the answer is no.

Why?

Because Obama is a extreme-left ideologue who attempts to jam the square peg of his leftist ideology into the round hole of apolitical reality.

Sowell again:

“The fundamental problem of the political Left seems to be that the real world does not fit their preconceptions. Therefore they see the real world as what is wrong, and what needs to be changed, since apparently their preconceptions cannot be wrong.”

It’s all rather sophomoric to me.