The “Birthers” challenge President Obama’s eligibility to be president, questioning his country of birth. Some particularly skeptical critics think this concedes too much, and, citing the bizarreness factor, question Obama’s planet of birth.
Now, a new concern trumps the issue of Obama’s place of birth—his year of birth. Yes, we somehow elected America’s First Teenage President. The evidence accumulates daily, but it is already overwhelming. Worse, he is a bad teenager.
Bad Teenagers are Narcissistic
Narcissists are grandiose, demanding to be recognized as superior. Obama assures us of his superiority, unhindered by any actual achievements before or after his election.
Bad Teenagers Live in Fantasy Worlds
Obama often mistakes himself for a god: “This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet began to heal.”
Other times, he confuses himself with presidents who actually confronted major challenges and made difficult decisions. Remember his Lincoln train ride to the inauguration?
Recall Obama’s “I am not a socialist” call to a reporter in early 2009, shortly after launching waves of socialism? He assured, “We’ve actually been operating in a way that has been entirely consistent with free-market principles…” Obama enjoys his own mental world, denouncing budget growth and deficits while creating record budgets and record deficits.
Bad Teenagers Sneak Cigarettes
It must be highly stressful to be a Bad Teenage President, so let’s cut Obama some slack on this.
Bad Teenagers Define Themselves Through Rebelling Against Adults
Obama can barely go a day without blaming former President Bush for the ills he is dedicated to making worse. If Obama were in office for a hundred years (perhaps his goal, but one not widely shared), he would still be blaming Bush. Obama even goes back in history, to making sure we understand that President Reagan was misguided in cutting taxes to end the recession he inherited.
Bad Teenagers are Impulsive
Obama displays this impulsiveness, as when he decided to close the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay and then realized he did not know what to do with the detainees. Later, he approved the decision to try terrorists in New York City, only later realizing this made no sense except to him and his Attorney General.
Bad Teenagers Exercise Poor Judgment in Selecting Friends
Poor Obama has a pattern of hanging around with the wrong crowd, e.g., in Chicago, an over-the-top blame-America minister, an unrepentant-terrorist academic, a now-convicted felon/real estate developer/political fundraiser, and a now-indicted governor. Once in the White House, he had a Mao enthusiast as his Communications Director and a former Red as his Green Jobs Czar. Bad teenagers take refuge in their gangs, and Obama has his, the Chicago Machine.
Bad Teenagers are Vandals
Obama has demonstrated remarkable skill at deepening and prolonging a recession that could have been turned around with marginal tax cuts, reductions in spending, and deregulation (i.e., what adults call “stimulus”). Obama instead vandalizes the economy through record spending, tax increases, bailouts, new regulation, socialism, protectionism, and promotion of unions.
Obama also vandalizes national security. He gratuitously investigates CIA personnel, apologizes to the country’s enemies while alienating its friends, and prefers trying terrorists in civilian courts.
Bad Teenagers Love Socialism
In the often-paraphrased observation, the young person who is not a socialist may lack a heart, but the adult who is still a socialist lacks a head. Pundits assure us that Obama is the smartest president in history, so his socialism must be a bad teenager enthusiasm.
Bad Teenagers Know They are Always Right
Obama stumbles from blunder to blunder, never admitting that he is dead wrong on virtually every policy. As unemployment predictably soars, he invents a new concept of “jobs saved,” a program so successful that it includes jobs in non-existent Congressional districts.
Like other bad teenagers, Obama spices his ignorance with sarcasm, as when he mocked critics of his spending plan: “What do you think a stimulus is?” Some of us thought stimulus might involve stimulus. But the teenage president is entitled to his trillion dollar mistakes.
Bad Teenagers are Thin-Skinned
Let’s be nice, because Obama gets pretty petulant when mere citizens or Congressmen oppose great ideas like a federal takeover of health care.
Bad Teenagers Reject “Boring” Academic Subjects
Obama’s academic record is secret, but we know he lacks interest in a few subjects he finds irrelevant to his current job: Economics (sorry, Mr. President, the government cannot create jobs, but you have proven it can kill them); History (Obama seems to be living in the 1930s, ignoring and repeating the mistakes that made a recession into the Great Depression); Mathematics (trillions plus trillions add up to even more trillions); Languages (was Obama’s “Austrian” speech translated into Canadian, Mexican, or Australian?); and Psychology (would a little self-awareness perhaps help?).
Bad Teenagers Have Ants in Their Pants
Obama gets itchy sitting still doing boring things like work. He loves to be on the go, sharing his misinformation throughout the country and the world. Does he know that Air Force One does not offer frequent flier points?
Bad Teenagers are Bossy Know-It-Alls
Obama appears on television to teach us things only he knows, nagging us to wash our hands to avoid getting the flu, or hectoring parents to spend time with their children.
He helpfully intervenes in local disputes, as in the Cambridge, Massachusetts incident last summer that spiraled down to a “beer summit.” He also runs industries such as financial services and automobile manufacturing, which benefit from his lifetime of experience doing nothing.
Bad Teenagers Don’t Bother with Stupid Old Protocol
Obama has a gift for awkwardness with foreign dignitaries. From giving DVDs (in the wrong regional format) to Prime Minister Brown, to bowing before the King of Saudi Arabia and Emperor of Japan, Obama does not waste time with the niceties of etiquette.
He shares this gift of informality with America, often dispensing with wearing a tie and keeping things nice and casual, referring to people from the media as “You guys.” And he criticizes (and misstates) a Supreme Court decision (shocking that the First Amendment might bar the criminalization of political speech) in his recent Statement of the Union speech, to the dismay of invited Justices. At his recent Health Care Summit, he calls senators and congressmen by their first names—creating confusion as to whether he thinks he is a god or a king.
Bad Teenagers are Annoying Whiners
Obama constantly complains how unfair it is that he has to do the job for which he sought election. From having to deal with economic issues to being unable to “just go to the barber shop or sit at a diner,” poor Obama is a victim of a cruel country that expected him to do his job with some competence and dignity.
Yes, we have America’s First Teenage President. But did he have to be a bad teenager?
(Click for the PDF version of America’s First Teenage President)
