What happens when a country elects a President with no ideology or core values?

We’re seeing what happens. People voted for “the audacity of hope” and “change we can believe in” — empty slogans with no real meaning. Now our country is in desperate straits, and the man who was elected to lead us has no idea what to do. He can’t even work himself up to make an inspiring speech to encourage us to have a little hope for the future.

Last Tuesday, we saw the Democratic Party experience an epic beating in the midterm elections, and what is our President’s reaction? He gives an interview to Steve Kroft of CBS’ 60 Minutes and, to quote Peter Daou, “apologizes for being a Democrat.” And then he leaves the country before the interview airs. And he goes to a country that, fairly or unfairly, symbolizes the outsourcing of American jobs.

Peter Daou really lets Obama have it for once:

The aftermath of the GOP’s midterm triumph perfectly illustrates this problem: Obama is falling over himself seeking compromise with Republicans, ceding to their frames, while Republican leaders say they will stick to their principles and try to destroy his presidency and legacy. Here’s how I put it a couple of days ago: If one side offers “compromise” and the other claims to stand firmly on principle, which one appears more principled to voters?

Astonishingly, in a 60 Minutes piece that just aired, Obama goes one step further. During the course of the entire interview he only once mentions having the courage of one’s convictions. And he attributes it not to himself or Democrats, but to Tom Coburn, a staunch conservative!

“There are some sincere Republicans in the Senate like Tom Coburn, Oklahoma, who is about as conservative as they come, but a real friend of mine and somebody who has always had the courage of his convictions and not, you know, bringing pork projects back to Oklahoma. And it may be that that’s an example of where, on a bipartisan basis, we can work together to change practices in Washington that generate a lot of the distrust of government.”

How can anyone claim that Obama is a Democrat? At the Atlantic, Derek Thompson asks “Why Did Obama Do the 60 Mintues Interview? Good question! He sure didn’t do it to advance the goals of the party he pretends to belong to and, yes, lead. Thompson:

Five days after a demoralizing midterm election, President Obama appeared on 60 Minutes to make the case that … wait, why did the president appear on 60 Minutes, exactly?

He told Americans that the economy might never fully recover. He said the White House is discouraged about the election and the economy. He admitted that he made mistakes, knowingly committed an unforced political error in health care reform, and got too heated with his rhetoric during the midterm campaign. He prepared Americans for the “hard, long slog” ahead. That the president is his own harshest critic is admirable, but CBS interviews aren’t required at the halfway point like a midterm exam. The president sat down in that chair to make a point. So what was the point?

Beats the hell out me.

Back in 1979, President Jimmy Carter gave a famous speech that is often referred to as “the malaise speech,” even though it didn’t contain the word “malaise.” That speech is often seen as Carter’s Waterloo. And yet Carter’s speech was inspiring and upbeat in comparison to the Obama’s whiny, sad sack performance on 60 Minutes.

This man sold himself as a transformational leader–an agent of change who would inspire all of us to be all we can be and to work together to accomplish great things. But what has he done since January 2009 to transform government or inspire Americans to reach for greatness? Zippo, as far as I can see.

Yesterday, the Washington Post highlighted this cheery bit from the 60 Minutes interview:

“What is a danger is that we stay stuck in a new normal where unemployment rates stay high,” he said in an interview aired Sunday night on CBS’s “60 Minutes.” “People who have jobs see their incomes go up. Businesses make big profits. But they’ve learned to do more with less. And so they don’t hire. And as a consequence, we keep on seeing growth that is just too slow to bring back the 8 million jobs that were lost.”

[….]

He lamented his inability to make more headway in creating jobs, conceding that “I do get discouraged.”

“I thought the economy would have gotten better by now,” he said. “One of the things I think you understand as president is you’re held responsible for everything. But you don’t always have control of everything.”

[….]

“Some of this is going to be just a matter of the economy healing,” he said. “Especially an economy this big, there are limited tools to encourage the kind of job growth that we need.

Will someone please get Obama to sit down and watch a PBS special on FDR’s responses to the Great Depression? He sounds too down in the dumps to read a book. Has this man never heard of the WPA or the CCC?

Roosevelt created the CCC with an executive order. He didn’t wait around for Congress to do something about unemployment–he went way out on a limb and did it himself. And it worked. Obama won’t do anything but wait around for Congress to act so he doesn’t have to take any responsibility.

Some of us expected this based on his history of “voting present.” But a hell of a lot of people fell for his con game, and now we’re stuck with him for at least two more years. Somehow we have to light a fire under this guy, but how?

At Huffpo, Katherine Reardon compares our predicament to “Waiting for Godot.”

Perhaps we are like Samuel Beckett’s characters Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting For Godot. These men wait for a man they admit to hardly knowing but nonetheless someone they expect to change their lives. They anticipate he will sort out their problems. Yet as they wait and wait, they decide that when he arrives he will do “nothing very definite.” Still, they wait.

I waited last night for the confident Democratic President of the United States to appear on 60 Minutes but he never quite arrived. In fact, the president who did arrive said when asked by Steve Croft about his promise to change Washington:

“That’s one of the dangers of assuming power. And you know, when you’re campaigning, you, I think you’re liberated to say things without thinking about, ‘Okay, how am I gonna actually practically implement this.'”

What? Nah! He didn’t say that, did he?

Yes, Katherine, he did. This is the “lightworker” that all the “progressives” foisted on us. More from Reardon’s piece:

Croft later asked about Social Security and Medicare — “things that the American people really think are important.” In his response, the president actually referred to “entitlements,” which the Republicans — who love that word by the way — are going to have to “confront in a serious way.” Excuse me?

Why not say:

Republicans like to talk about earning what you get. That’s exactly what people do every every pay period when they contribute to Social Security. That’s their money. They earned it. That’s their nest egg and while I’m president nobody is going to steal it from them.

Or,

Let’s be very clear. Diminishing social security in any way is income redistribution. Yes, that’s what I said — exactly what the Republicans say they hate. It’s distributing hard-working Americans’ income to the rich by way of tax cuts for the wealthy.

And of course you know what our great leader had to say about tax cuts for the wealthy: he’s open to compromising with the Republicans on that. Yes, once again, our President has capitulated before the bargaining even begins.

We’ve got to get through two more years with this guy in charge. Does anyone have any ideas about how we can either get him to act like an old-style FDR Democrat or else put someone in charge who can?