Indecision rules the day at the White House. With little to no leadership from the White House, the House and Senate are bumbling along into what looks like, if there isn’t a breakthrough, an inevitable government shut down. The president, as Michael Barone wrote in National Review Online, has voted “present.” Unfortunately for the country, a president can’t vote present, because he is the only one of his kind. Indecision in the White House stops the country dead.
The country needs answers on a range of issues now. What’s America’s move on Libya? No one has the slightest clue where the president stands. Is there a compromise to be had on a budget for the year? If so, the president is not letting on, even as Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) begs him for a clue.
No, instead the president is focusing the weight of the free world on political battles in Wisconsin and an extensive policy speech on schoolyard bullying. This is not surprising to anyone who has studied the president’s behavior. His entire political career has been one of avoidance. He has avidly avoided taking stands on substantive issues, voting present 129 times in the Illinois State Senate. I am certain that had voters elected me (an unlikely prospect) to represent them, there would have been zero present votes. A legislator, or executive is elected to office to make decisions and take stands. Avoidance is a dereliction of duty.
Not only does the president seem incapable of making decisions himself, but those he delegates power to are sidelined before they can complete their mission. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has consistently been replaced by special envoys. And immediately after he was picked as the president’s point man on solving the budget impasse, VP Joe Biden was sent to Moscow, not to be heard from again. Meanwhile, the House kand the Senate are staring down the barrel of a government shutdown, with no charted course correction.
Instead of hammering out a compromise on a budget for the year, the president has moved on to pushing his budget for 2012. The budget proposal is an abject failure. The president has completely ignored his own bipartisan deficit commission, with not even a nod toward deficit reduction.
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