Obama’s Women
January 16, 2013 by John Myers
I wrote this headline to get your attention. The truth is that President Barack Obama is nothing like President John F. Kennedy. He isn’t even like President Bill Clinton, who pretended to be Kennedy by chasing young interns around the Oval Office instead of sleeping with Hollywood starlets or mob bosses’ girlfriends.
Instead, Obama has a much more complex relationship with women who put the Nation in greater jeopardy than any women who were friends of Kennedy or Clinton. (Fair warning: If you are a women’s rights activist, please stop reading. Otherwise, I will have to wade through all your hate email.)
Obama is no cad; he is, as Arnold Schwarzenegger might say, “a girly man.” He is not strong enough to take a leadership role as President, but instead lets two women run his life and the country. In this way, the President is a weakling reminiscent of King Edward VIII, the man who doted on Wallis Simpson’s every wish. He is not like President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had a dalliance with his driver, Capt. Kay Summersby, while he was the Supreme Allied Commander.
I have nothing against women as leaders. I would prefer Hillary Clinton as President to Obama. What I don’t like is a man with responsibility who hides behind the designer dresses of women. And, my friends, this is the man and President that Obama is.
Exhibit A: Valerie Jarrett
Late last year, Richard Minter, a New York Times bestselling writer, released his newest book, Leading From Behind.
The book jacket tells much:
Leading from Behind reveals a president who is indecisive, moody, and often paralyzed by competing political considerations. Many victories–as well as significant failures–during the Obama presidency are revealed to be the work of strong women, who led when the president did not: then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi; Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; and Valerie Jarrett, his closest adviser and an Obama family confidante, whose unusual degree of influence has been a source of conflict with veteran political insiders.
Minter focuses on Jarrett, saying she has a “Rasputin-like” hold over Obama. According to Minter, Jarrett is the kingpin in the Obama Administration and she has misused “her extraordinary access” to the President. Upon further research, I discovered she has full-time Secret Service protection and a staff of nearly three dozen.
Born to American parents and raised for the first five years of her life in Iran, Jarrett shares many of the same principles Obama has regarding the future and diminished role for the United States.
Jarrett is an African-American intellectual who launched the careers of both the first lady and the President beginning in the early 1990s. She influences foreign and domestic policies of the President, from Obamacare to his staunch anti-Israel position.
They are reportedly kindred spirits and, while Jarrett has managed to stay under the liberal media’s radar, Minter’s book has flushed out the truth about this woman:
Jarrett’s White House role is unprecedented. She meets privately with the president at least twice a day with no one else present. Her influence is enormous and wide-ranging. She wields informal power, like a first lady; scheduling power, like a chief of staff; and power over policy, like a special envoy. She has the unusual freedom to put herself in any meeting she chooses and to set the priorities as she sees fit. When The New York Times’s Robert Draper asked Obama if he “runs every decision past her,” the president answered immediately: “Yep. Absolutely.”
Every decision?
Yes, Jarrett’s scope is as unlimited as it sounds. She has “wide latitude over how she spends her day” and that makes her “close to omniscient.”
Exhibit B: Michelle Obama
This comes from People magazine. (I admit that while my wife buys it, I do read it — or at least look at the pictures.) People recently published its special year-end edition which included a long interview in which Obama seems fixated about his wife and daughters. Included among the many photos of the President and the first lady is one with this cutline: “’ANGLE, ANGLE!’ Mrs. Obama (with the President in the Palm Room Dec. 6) tried to position her husband just so. ‘He has only one good side.’”
On May 14, Obama was speaking to graduates of Bernard College: “You can be stylish and powerful, too. That’s Michelle’s advice.”
The first lady’s hands-on style may be far more ambitious than just passing on advice.
Last month, actor Samuel L. Jackson came out as a supporter of Michelle Obama as a Presidential candidate. Jackson, an outspoken liberal who favors greater government involvement in poor urban areas, told Newsweek that the first lady is a “Superwoman” who could hold any office she wants.
If Michelle Obama were to run for the highest office, her campaign would likely be orchestrated by the person who mentored her in Chicago, Jarrett.
Newsweek reported that James Clyburn, a high ranking African-American member of the House, also can see Michelle Obama in office.
“She’s honest and straightforward, which is not what you see in Washington much. She is exactly what we need around here,” he said.
So far, Michelle Obama has denied any political ambitions; but, then again, Hillary Clinton made similar claims.
Most first ladies have considerable influence over their husbands. Nancy Reagan was perhaps President Ronald Reagan’s only close personal friend. And while Nancy Reagan was protective of her husband and even had some top advisers fired, she stayed on the periphery of the Presidency, using her influence to help people “just say no” to drugs.
I am not claiming that the first lady should not be the first and strongest backer of her husband. What I am saying is that we do not cast our vote for the first lady; we cast it for her husband.
My question: Just when you think the end is in sight (regrettably, that will be four years from now), is it possible for the Obama family to remain in the White House for another eight years beyond the end of Barack Obama’s Presidency? It is conceivable that there is enough support for Michelle Obama to make a run at the White House in the 2016 election. Her odds may be slim, but the potential exists to stretch the Obamas’ reign to the year 2024.
I wonder whether either the Clintons or the Obamas have found the loophole around the 22nd Amendment. Passed on March 21, 1947, and ratified by the States in 1951, it limited a President to two four-year terms. It was a different era; I doubt anyone gave consideration to the idea that Bess Truman would extend the Truman Presidency another eight years.
Regardless of what may happen four years from now, we are stuck with Barack Obama, a President who, according to friends and critics, is unusually closeted and who is influenced too much by two women in his White House. Who would think that when it came to Presidential politics we would miss Marilyn Monroe?
Yours in good times and bad,
–John Myers
Editor, Myers Energy & Gold Report
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