A whiff of mendacity has clung to this administration since its beginning. A ghost-written memoir, vague and misleading statements about links to domestic terrorists, a non-existent legislative and academic record, a past shrouded in secrecy — it was easy to believe that the new president was more myth than man, with his greatest asset the ease with which he dissembled.
Subsequent events have borne that out. If we like our plans we can keep them, the more credulous amongst us were conned into believing. Transparency would be the order of the day, said the most opaque executive in modern history. He’d bring the nation together, promised the master of racial, class, and political division. He knew nothing about (name your scandal), he endlessly claimed. But we’d know the truth as soon as he did, the great stonewaller assured us.
The dishonesty, the dodging, the blaming was all very ugly and sad and degrading, but it wasn’t unexpected, simply crooked Chicago politics on the national stage.
Now, however, I think we’re seeing something else, something more insidious, something darker and more sinister. The inexplicable refusal to attend the pro-free-speech rally in Paris is a hint of it, as is the unexpected and unilateral concession to Cuba. Now we read that Mr. Obama may have interceded on Iran’s behalf to blunt the investigation of a devastating anti-Semitic terrorist attack in Argentina, even as the administration stands seemingly alone in its insistence that leniency be granted to Iran’s theocratic-totalitarian regime as it races to complete its first nuclear weapons.
Most ominously, in an act of unprecedented vulgarity and crassness, the administration makes obscene comments about, and issues blatant threats to, our closest ally, Israel, for daring to take a stand against Islamic terror.
I expected recklessness and prevarication from this lame duck president. I didn’t expect such an aggressive and blatant betrayal of basic decency and of our national interests.
[Update]
Now we read that Mr. Obama has stooped so low as to send his own campaign people to Israel in an effort to defeat Prime Minister Netanyahu in the upcoming Israeli elections. Despicable.
budbromley 
Bud,
Nicely written. Mr. Racette captured the enigma that a thoughtful person confronts when trying to understand the logic behind Obama’s actions. Obama so consistently makes the wrong call regarding our nation’s wellbeing that one wonders if he is delusional or if his metrics for success are 180 degrees out of sync from those of the common observer. Consistent, however he has been, from decades of following Reverent Wright to his present day international and domestic policies, there are no good explanations for his behavior.
John
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John, there is however one logical explanation for Obama’s behavior, one of those truths which is right in front of us but hardly anyone wishes to acknowledge. Obama really does not like this country or its people and that is the reason for his fundamental changes.
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