The Incredible Shrinking Obama Presidency
Special to EIR
Aug. 5—Less than four months after Lyndon LaRouche delivered a public warning that President Barack Obama was suffering from a severe "Nero Complex," and that he was his own worst political enemy, the Obama Presidency is in a state of chaos. A coterie of White House sycophants are bogged down in paranoid and defensive actions against the President's enemies, real and perceived, while key policy areas are left in shambles—starting with the total collapse of the U.S. economy, which the President's men hysterically deny, and are desperately trying to "spin" into an economic recovery.
This is the assessment of a growing number of leading Democrats—including some White House advisors—who have seen, up-close, the rapid pace of disintegration of the policy-making process, in and around the Oval Office, and who have conveyed their concerns to EIR and to others.
The total failure of Team Obama to win House and Senate support for a White House-drafted euthanasia bill, disguised as a health-care "reform" package, is but the tip of the iceberg. Instead of successfully ramming the President's signature legislation through the House and the Senate, the President now faces a popular revolt against his euthanasia scheme, modeled on Adolf Hitler's September 1939 T-4 program for the elimination of the elderly and the chronically ill, whose lives were deemed "not worthy of living."
Republican legislators, desperate for an issue around which to rebuild their shattered party, have seized upon the President's embrace of Nazi euthanasia, to score significant political gains. Seeing the threat, many Democrats, who face reelection in November 2010, are seriously considering letting go of Obama's coattails. The Republicans have been smart enough to follow LaRouche's lead in bluntly attacking the President's health-care policy as a mirror-image of the Nazi program.
The only real option left for President Obama, is to clean house, shift policy, and place himself at the disposal of those within the institution of the Presidency, who truly see the way out of this gravest crisis in modern times. The question is: Will the President be able to put the interests of the nation above his insatiable ego?
Clinical Evidence
The clinical evidence of the incredible shrinking Obama Presidency is widely available for anyone choosing to face it.
- Politico's Mike Allen reported on Aug. 4, that the White House has gone into a flight-forward against Internet pundit Matt Drudge, who posted a video recently, showing Obama discussing the elimination of private health insurance—a policy that, in fact, the President has publicly repudiated. Instead of ignoring the relatively insignificant Drudge, the White House produced a three-minute video, with a detailed, defensive refutation of Drudge's video posting. A radio advertising campaign will accompany the distribution of the made-for-TV ad—all at taxpayers' expense.
- The next day, the Wall Street Journal reported that the usually mild-mannered Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner exploded during a July 31 White House working session on the Administration's bank reregulation policy. Geithner "blasted top U.S. financial regulators in an expletive-laced critique last Friday as frustration grows over the Obama administration's faltering plan to overhaul U.S. financial regulation," the Journal reported.
- On Aug. 4, word also leaked out of the White House that Gregory Craig, the White House general counsel, may be on his way out, the first victim of the President's "Nero Complex." Craig is reportedly being scapegoated for the President's own failure to give aides time to develop a legal and logistical strategy for shutting down the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and for other actions that generated bad press and shrinking polling numbers for the President.
The Obama White House coterie—led by Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, Larry Summers, and Denis McDonough—are also gunning for National Security Advisor Gen. James Jones, according to Pentagon and U.S. intelligence sources, who report that the small group of Obama campaign advisors, now ensconced in the West Wing, see themselves as the arbiters of all national security and foreign-policy decision-making, and regard the front-line national security team as outsiders, too institutional, and divorced from the pressing realities of re-election.
The 'L' Word
The disintegration of effective policy-making deliberations is but a manifestation of the problem. Mention the name "Lyndon LaRouche" in the presence of any of the White House sycophants, and you will see an explosion of rage. The fact that LaRouche's recent international webcasts have drawn considerable discussion from leading Democratic Party economists, who increasingly share LaRouche's view that the entire global financial system is irreversibly bankrupt, and must be replaced, drives them collectively up a wall. Adding to their discomfort, is the fact that LaRouche was the first public figure of note to label the President a Narcissist, and that LaRouche continues to highlight the clinical evidence of his assessment.
They stubbornly refuse to recognize that LaRouche is right, and that his proposed solutions to the crisis—starting with his 2007 Homeowners and Bank Protection Act (HBPA)—are the only way out of an otherwise hopeless situation. Ironically, LaRouche has provided the only comprehensive solution to the ongoing disintegration of the Obama Presidency, and the destruction of the United States.
The prospect that Larry Summers, Rahm Emanuel, or David Axelrod will come to their senses, go to the President, and urge him to make the needed changes, are zero.
Increasingly, Members of Congress are finding themselves facing lynch mobs, when they return to their districts and try to hold town hall meetings, promoting the Obama agenda.
With $24 trillion in taxpayers money either spent or pledged, on the bailout of a hopelessly bankrupt Federal Reserve System; with the President's health-care "reform" now seen by a majority of Americans as a scheme for euthanasia; with 48 of the 50 states bankrupt, and with no prospects of Federal assistance to avert massive austerity cuts; and with actual unemployment in the nation soaring far beyond the "official" 10% figure, this rage is going to only build in intensity over the remainder of the Summer.
So, where will the solution come from—in time to save the Obama Presidency and the nation from certain destruction? As LaRouche himself emphasized, in his Aug. 1, 2009 webcast, the institution of the Presidency is much bigger than the President and his immediate team. It is this apparatus that must respond, as LaRouche has done, to the urgency of the situation.
When Lyndon Johnson was unwilling to face the fact that his Presidency had been irreversibly destroyed by his plunge into war in Indochina, a group of "institutional men" went to him and extracted his decision not to seek reelection. When Richard Nixon considered hanging on to his job, in the face of imminent impeachment, another group of "institutional men" went to him and forced his resignation—rather than allow further erosion of the Presidency.
Today, we are once again at such a moment, and time is running out. President Obama, as LaRouche explained on Aug. 1, can either submit to the broader interests of the nation, abandon his policies, and bring in a competent group of economic advisors, to supplement his effective national security/foreign policy team—or face going down in history as the President who plunged the United States into the abyss.
So, who will it be today, who will have the guts and access to pay the urgently needed visit to this President?
