OPINION:
It was just over three years ago that Barack Obama echoed the words of great men in his much-ballyhooed speech on race: “We the people, in order to form a more perfect Union … .” That occasion was guaranteed to chart a new course for the country, all to no avail. Despite being promoted as a “landmark” occasion, not even the most ardent liberal can recite a poignant line or concrete result from the event. That’s because Mr. Obama dispenses supposedly momentous addresses like a Pez dispenser.
Franklin Roosevelt accurately defined a “day of infamy.” Ronald Reagan demanded the communists “tear down this wall.” Standing on the rubble of the World Trade Center, George W. Bush extemporaneously stated, “I can hear you, the rest of the world hears you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!”
When he isn’t borrowing rhetoric in an attempt to channel courageous men who were actually tested - and met the challenge - in office, Mr. Obama rarely says anything of import. Perhaps his most telling admission was when he quipped, “I can no more disown [the Rev. Jeremiah Wright] than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”
FDR stood up to totalitarianism across two oceans. Reagan stood up to the Soviets. Mr. Bush stood up to Islamic terrorists. Mr. Obama stood up to … his grandmother. He won the Nobel Peace Prize only months later.
The unemployment rate for blacks averaged 16 percent in 2010, according to the Labor Department. In June of 2011, that number stood at 16.2 percent. The overall U.S. unemployment rate is 8.6 percent. Looking at the numbers, it appears that the Obama administration’s solution to America’s “original sin of slavery” is to make men and women of all races equally miserable. But as with every challenge, Mr. Obama is content to package different flavors of soaring vagueness into a series of candy-coated speeches. The American people quickly digest them, but the lack of substance leaves everyone looking for answers.
With Herman Cain out of the presidential contest, Democratic race-baiters can breathe a sigh of relief: Their favorite card is back in play. What they don’t understand is the American people are tired of the Pez-dispenser presidency. They’re desperate for substance, and if the Republican nominee is smart, he will give it to them. Americans, regardless of color, are hungry for more than a confectionery treat. What they are craving are jobs.
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