Obamacare is only a symptom.

Listen To You Tell Me Texas Friday 10/24/14

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It has been said that politics abandons its wounded. Certainly that seems the case with respect to President Obama.

More than one Democratic candidate locked in a tight mid-term race has either been reluctant or has outright refused to admit having ever even voted for Obama. Democrats are all but unanimous in not wishing to be seen with him.

A difficult second term – one that has included the horribly botched rollout of Obamacare, continuing revelations concerning what happened in Benghazi, the Veterans Affairs hospital scandals, the IRS scandal, the meteoric rise of the terrorist group ISIS, and just lately the government’s poor response to the Ebola crisis – has exacted a heavy toll. The cool, smooth competence of the Obama campaign has devolved into an increasingly unhinged Obama administration.

Things were very much different not that long ago. But even so, given the near collapse of his second term, it’s becoming hard to remember just how brightly the Obama star once shone.

I was on the floor of what was then called the Fleet Center in Boston for the 2004 Democratic National Convention and Obama’s keynote speech. I and a colleague both recognized an up and comer when we saw one. I compared Obama’s speech to the one future president Ronald Reagan gave at the 1964 GOP convention.

I was again on hand in 2008 when Obama accepted the Democratic nomination on a stage adorned with Greek columns in a stadium filled with close to 100,000 people. All around me I saw women – and men – with tears streaming down their faces.

Fast forward six years and one can imagine the disappointment of many of those weeping supporters, even if they might be loathe to say so.

Following yet another difficult, costly, controversial and ultimately indecisive war, and in the wake of the housing collapse that nearly brought about an economic collapse, millions of Americans wanted to believe that what was needed was a benevolent, all-seeing philosopher king – a man who by dint of charm, intellect and personality could bring order out of chaos.

That was the ‘hope’ of “Hope & Change.”

Little of that hope now remains. What’s left is a civics lesson.

The Messiah exists in Judeo-Christian theology but nowhere in the U.S. Constitution. When it comes to governing a free nation, there is no place for a messiah.

No cult of personality can effectively or justly govern any nation, let alone a republic of 50 sovereign states and 315 million people. Prosperity is the fruit of freedom and freedom exists only where there is individual responsibility, a keenly felt duty of self-help, dispersed power and a cultural belief in government restrained by law.

To the extent that these national traits existed six years ago, they exist much less so today. The results are now on display.

The country tried a messiah in 2008. In 2014, Democrats by their deeds if not their words are admitting that it didn’t work out.

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