Presidential Dictatorship: Not Thinking Things Through
The authors appear to believe that the formidable powers exercised by Obama somehow originated with him – or, at very least, that Republican occupancy of the White House immunizes the office against depravity.
While painting Obama as a singular threat to liberty and Bill Clinton as a degenerate who “lowered the culture” of an electorate that twice elected him, they insist that “George W. Bush stood up for America, albeit sometimes clumsily.”
Translated into Roman terms, the authors would have us believe that Clinton was the corrupt, self-absorbed adolescent Elagabalus, and Obama either the depraved Nero or the despotic Diocletian – but Bush the Younger, heck, he was Claudius, a relatively well-intentioned, albeit physically maladroit and verbally challenged, legitimate heir.
In fact, Obama is not materially different from his predecessor in any significant way. Mssrs. Christian and Robbins depict Obama as a unique threat to our “Anglo-Saxon” tradition of liberty protected by law. But it was Bush – acting under the influence of his Sith Master, Dick Cheney – who disemboweled the habeas corpus guarantee, the foundation of common law protections of individual rights. Granted, Obama has embraced and enlarged on Bush’s actions, but the damage was done before the “alien” occupied the Oval Office.