Dear President Obama,
You strike me as the sort of man who spends a lot of time staring
at his own reflection. I wonder, what do you see when you gaze so
admiringly at yourself? What image do you find in that mirror of yours?
Let me guess: a graceful Greek god with a golden crown, draped in
luxurious robes, perched on a giant, magnificent throne atop a mountain in the
sky? You see a throng of angels singing your praises and masses of
subservient peasants prostrated before you, trembling with fear and awe?
You see a man who is more than a man, and a president who transcends the
presidency; you see a historic figure of immortal importance?
Yeah, that’s what I thought, and I can’t blame you, Mr.
President. By all accounts, you’ve always been an arrogant, haughty
narcissist — and that was before you became president. Your supporters
and your enemies may argue over whether you descended from heaven on the back
of a Pegasus, or were birthed from the bowels of Hell to bring about a Biblical
apocalypse, but they both agree on one thing: you are a figure of great
significance and immense power. You are either the anti-Christ or the
Second Coming, with no room for anything in-between. Surely, this talk might
cause even a humble man to slip into a state of vanity and pride, so I can only
imagine what it must do to a man such as yourself, already so aloof and so
conceited.
That’s why I’m writing this letter. My impression of you is
quite different, and it has only been solidified by your performance during
this shutdown/Obamacare debate. I find you to be a very small man, Mr.
President. Far from larger than life, you are petty, frivolous, pathetic;
sneering and pompous but also trifling and narrow. I don’t mean to
dismiss or underestimate the damage you have done to this nation — it has
certainly been profound and lasting — but I want you to know that your legacy
will not be one of grandeur and brilliance; it will be the legacy of a
shameless, desperate bully. Both your opponents and your proponents hoist
you up as a world leader with a grand vision, whether benevolent or malevolent.
I, on the other hand, believe you have the vision of a temperamental two year
old. You simply want to feel like you’re in control; you want to “win,”
you want everybody in the room to pay attention to you, and you’ll stomp your
feet and whine until you get your way. You govern like a coddled toddler;
it’s inappropriate to pejoratively refer to you as a “dictator,” but only
because it lends you a certain unwarranted credibility. I think you wish
to be a dictator, but instead you’re just a bumbling bureaucrat; easily
replaced and even more easily forgotten. You have the ethics of Genghis
Khan, but the leadership skills of Michael Scott. This is why we are
forced to witness the spectacle of, for instance, our president brazenly threatening
to invade another nation for no reason, only to clumsily abandon the idea after
being publicly spanked by Putin.
Your legacy, Mr. President, will be defined by small, shameful
things, as your presidency has been primarily a succession of small, shameful
things. The platitudes you spouted during your campaign— the theatrics,
the pomp, the hype — have all faded. Replaced by the scheming partisan
machinations that have come to define your tenure.
Every president has a moment that encapsulates their time in office;
your moment, Mr. President, happened this week. Sure, future generations
will look at you with mockery and scorn because of bigger scandals — Benghazi,
the IRS targeting conservatives, Obamacare, the birth control mandate and your
attacks on religious liberty, spying on journalists, arming terrorists
overseas, Fast and Furious, the crony green energy scams, the bailouts, your support for
infanticide, the billions you’ve given to the abortion industry, your cowardice
in refusing to address the Gosnell murders, your reckless exploitation of the
Zimmerman trial, the out of control deficit spending, your refusal to enforce
immigration laws, the massive expansion of the Welfare State, the lies, the
broken promises, etc — but I think, in an understated way, what you’ve done
this week is a better microcosm of your entire reign.
I’m not just referring to the fact that you are
peddling the lie that “Republicans” have “shutdown the
government,”when, in fact, they have attempted to pass several bills that would
fund the government. Mr. President, you tell these fables to the trained
seals in the media and your voting base, but you know darn well that any
American with a capacity for critical thought will roundly reject this absurd
narrative. YOU have chosen to “shut down” the government because you have
made Obamacare the ultimate priority. You have said, “Obamacare or
nothing,” and then accused Republicans of being the “hostage takers.”
They are holding the government hostage by trying to fund it? What a
silly idea. But then, you are a silly, ridiculous president.
Speaking of which, this takes us right to your defining moment:
barricading memorials and monuments in a ploy to win an argument.
Comparatively insignificant when stacked up against your war crimes
and constitutional infringements, but it is nonetheless an apt
illustration. The Lincoln Memorial is just a giant statue. There
isn’t any reason why people shouldn’t be able to look at a statue during a
government shutdown. In past shutdowns, the memorials were open, with
only the information centers closing down. The Lincoln Memorial has never
been completely closed off from the public until now. You have decided to
spend money to block and guard open-air monuments, when it would be cheaper,
require less staff, and be less onerous to simply leave them be. Is this
some sort of bizarre punitive measure against the American taxpayer?
Infamously, you even attempted to stop WW2 veterans from visiting
the WW2 memorial. That memorial is mostly privately funded, and is open
24 hours a day. You SPENT MONEY to physically guard the monument from a group
of elderly war veterans. This is truly unprecedented. We have had
horrible presidents in the past, but none quite so shallow, cheap and
contemptible. You tried to close down Mt. Vernon, which is privately
funded, but had to settle for closing its parking lot — even though the parking
lot requires no immediate on-going maintenance or surveillance from any federal
workers. Did you have to shut down the Normandy cemetery and
memorial? Are we saving money that way? I doubt it.
It’s the same game you played during the sequester, and it comes as no
surprise to those of us who pay attention (which means it came as a surprise to
a large number of people). Rather than leading like a statesman, you hide
in the shadows; scheming, conniving, exploiting. You emerge only to make
hyper-partisan speeches, with rhetoric best left to Democratic talking heads on
afternoon cable news shows. Far from being a “new kind of politician” (as
you were advertised), you are the most political politician this country has
ever seen. You are political to your core, in your essence, at an atomic level,
and so you are unable to offer any direction or clarity when the nation needs
it most. Sometimes, Mr. President, the affairs of this nation require a
man, not a politician, and it is during those times that you are especially
useless. You don’t have any interest in fixing our present crisis because
you’re too busy finding ways to keep a busload of 90-year old war veterans from
looking at a memorial.
Closing down parks, monuments and memorials just to score political
points is hardly your most insidious deed, but it’s certainly one of your
pettiest. That’s why it stands, ironically, as a monument of its
own. If we ever build a statue of you, Mr. President, you won’t be triumphantly
holding a flaming torch like Lady Liberty, or standing authoritatively with a
look of determination, like the MLK memorial. No, it will be a statue of
you pulling the wings off of a fly, or spitting in someone’s orange
juice. It will show you in your essence, as monuments are meant to
do. It will show you as a petulant, skulking, juvenile bully. It
will show you as you are.
And we’ll make sure it’s always open, especially during a
government shut down.
Sincerely,
Matt Walsh
In God We Trust
