Barack Obama: President of ... What?

The biggest problem with President Obama is that he so often seems not to have a grasp on just exactly what it is that he is president of.  There appears to be no recognition in this White House that, once the election campaign is over, the winner becomes the president of all 50 United States, along with every person who resides within them.

We have never had a president who so openly demonizes huge swaths of American society on such a regular basis as we have seen this President repeatedly do with Tea Partiers (even resorting to the obscene "tea bagger" reference), opponents of socialized healthcare, anyone making more than $100,000 per year, and the entire state of Arizona, to name just a few of his chosen rhetorical targets.  Then there are those segments of our society to whom this President and his gang of Chicago thugs offer nothing more than benign neglect:  The people of Nashville, who just weeks ago suffered through flooding comparable to what Katrina did to New Orleans with barely a mention from this President, millions of Americans living along the border with Mexico who suffer with the drug trafficking and violence that are a facet of daily life in the region while this Administration steadfastly refuses to do anything about enforcing the laws on the federal books, and the people of the Gulf Coast, who had to wait 37 days before this President summoned the interest to deign to hold a press conference about the ongoing tragedy of the BP oil spill.

To that growing daily list, we can add the families of America's fallen veterans, insulted on Monday by this President's choice to vacation in Chicago rather than take part in the traditional Memorial Day presidential ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.  The breaking of this tradition is just the latest in a long line of insults to the military offered by Mr. Obama and his Administration over the last year and a half.

Given these and many more divisive acts taken by this President, it is increasingly obvious that Mr. Obama considers himself the "president" only of those who voted for him and support his radical leftist political agenda.  Can there be any real question, for instance, that had it been a very blue-state Boston that suffered through massive spring flooding rather than deep-in-the-heart-of-a-red-state Nashville, this Administration would have staged a massive federal response to the disaster?

If the BP oil spill threatened the coastlines of blue-state California, Oregon and Washington rather than red-state Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas, does anyone really believe that this President and his minions would have sat benignly by for a full month doing little other than deflecting blame before finally and begrudgingly beginning the process of treating the event as a disaster of national proportions?  If you do believe that, well, you'd be much better off reading Alice in Wonderland than this column.

Whatever else one thinks about George W. Bush, as President – and as Texas Governor before that – he was studiously careful not to use derogatory rhetoric about any segment of our society.  Where Obama derides Tea Party activists at seemingly every given opportunity, Bush never lowered himself or the office he occupied to criticize those who participated in the thousands of obscene and often violent anti-war protests that became a staple of American life after the invasion of Iraq.

Bill Clinton was also very careful to avoid the use of divisive rhetoric against any segment of the American public, and clearly understood the necessity of any president staying above the fray.  In reality, until the elevation of Mr. Obama to the office, one would be at great pains to find an example of any sitting president since Woodrow Wilson who openly and frequently demonized large segments of the U.S. population for political gain.

Clearly, President Obama feels no similar need for restraint, and in fact obviously believes that dividing the nation is in his own self-interest.  As long as that political calculation holds at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, we can anticipate two and a half more years of a nation becoming increasingly and more bitterly divided.

And there is no reason to believe the political calculation will change.  This strategy is in keeping with the Obama Administration's adherence to the demonize-and-conquer strategies taught by late Chicago radical Saul Alinsky, whose teachings have guided this President throughout his adult lifetime.  This is who Mr. Obama is, and who he will remain.

This reality will bring joy to the hate-filled cretins who inhabit leftwing websites, but it won't do much for the rest of a population yearning for a President who actually gives a damn when a tragedy such as the BP oil spill devastates an entire region of the country, regardless of how that region voted in the 2008 presidential election.  For that, they will have to wait until January 20, 2013.