HURT: So what is it, exactly, ‘we can’t wait’ for?

OPINION:

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

We can’t wait”? Seriously? This is the best argument President Obama can come up with for why he deserves a second term?

Not exactly the jingle juggernaut from his last campaign. He has gone from the hopeful and promising “Yes, we can!” to the depressing and defeated “No, we can’t!”

He and his campaign are using the new slogan to rehab Mr. Obama’s image, push for more spending and even launch a bizarre effort to thwart the Constitution by going “around Congress” to get done things he deems necessary.

And what is it, precisely, we can’t wait for? Another four years?

We can’t wait for another global tour apologizing to the world for America? We cannot wait for another war of Mr. Obama’s choosing? We can’t wait for another 2 million jobs lost? We can’t wait to pile on another $4 trillion in debt? We can’t wait for yet another unsustainable entitlement program saddled atop three collapsing ones?

It is as if Mr. Obama suddenly rediscovered the “fierce urgency of now” he used to talk so much about. Flailing around at 40 percent in the polls and a looming election will do that to a politician.

But let’s just pause for a minute and take this fantasy at face value and assume he is correct and we really can’t wait to get on with another four years of this. According to him, the only problem with the current situation is that damned Congress.

Of course, he always fails to mention that half of Congress is run by his own party and that is where his real problems lie. It is not Republicans so much as defections from the ranks of his own party in the Senate that have doomed so many of his initiatives.

Does Mr. Obama actually think the next Congress he faces will be so much improved that he will finally be able to get done all these things that have already been rejected by bipartisan majorities in Congress?

Does he think Democrats are going to retake the House? Does he think liberal Democrats are somehow going to surge into greater control of the Senate? No sane person thinks either scenario is likely and so, by Mr. Obama’s own argument, the next four years will be even worse with even more gridlock between him and Congress.

But perhaps there is another, more base and sinister reason to trot out this new slogan. It is rip-off of a book titled “Why We Can’t Wait” by none other than Martin Luther King Jr. It is about racism and segregation in America and the civil rights struggle King led before his assassination.

So much for all the promises that Mr. Obama would be our first “post-racial” president. America, are you ready for this campaign?

• Charles Hurt’s column appears Wednesday. He can be reached at charleshurt@live.com.