By Edward Klein, Edward Klein

Published June 08, 2012

FoxNews.com

On the evening of Tuesday, June 30, 2009—just five months into his administration—Barack Obama invited a small group of presidential historians to dine with him in the Family Quarters of the White House. His chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, personally delivered the invitations with a word of caution: the meeting was to remain private and off the record. As a result, the media missed the chance to report on an important event, for the evening with the historians provided a remarkable sneak preview of why the Obama presidency would shortly go off the rails.

Today, with Mr. Obama in full campaign mode, that event—as well as two more unreported White House dinners with the historians—is worth examining. Together, they shed light on the reason this president is likely to find it much harder than he expects to connect with the public and win reelection to the White House.

At the time of the first dinner, the new president was still enjoying a honeymoon period with the American people; according to Gallup, 63 percent of Americans approved of the job he was doing. Brimming with self-confidence, Mr. Obama had earlier confided to David Axelrod, his chief political strategist: “The weird thing is, I know I can do this job. I like dealing with complicated issues. I’m happy to make decisions.…I think it’s going to be an easier adjustment for me than the campaign. Much easier.”

That the adjustment from campaigner to chief executive would prove harder—much harder—than anticipated had still not dawned on Mr. Obama when he sat down to dine with the historians. He was in an expansive mood as he tucked into his lamb chops and went around the table addressing each historian by name—Doris Kearns Goodwin, Michael Beschloss, Robert Caro, Robert Dallek, Douglas Brinkley, H. W. “Billam” Brands, David Kennedy, Kenneth Mack, and Garry Wills.

During the presidential campaign, most of the evening’s dinner guests, like their liberal counterparts in the media, had dropped any pretense at objectivity. For instance, Michael Beschloss ('Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America, 1789-1989') described Obama as “probably the smartest guy ever to become president,” which appeared to put Thomas Jefferson in his place.

Judging from Mr. Obama’s questions, one subject was uppermost in his mind: how could he become a “transformational” president and bend the historic trajectory of America’s domestic and foreign policy?

When one of the historians brought up the difficulties that Lyndon Johnson, another wartime president, faced trying to wage a foreign military venture while implementing an ambitious domestic agenda, Mr. Obama grew testy. He implied that he was different, because he could prevail by the force of his personality. He could solve the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, put millions of people back to work, redistribute wealth, withdraw from Iraq, and reconcile the United States to a less dominant role in the world.

It was, by any measure, a breathtaking display of grandiosity by a man whose entire political curriculum vitae consisted of seven undistinguished years in the Illinois senate and two mostly absent years in the United States Senate. That evening Mr. Obama revealed the characteristics—arrogance, conceit, egotism, vanity, hubris and, above all, rank amateurism—that would mark his presidency and doom it to frustration and failure.

These characteristics had already set the pattern of his administration. Mr. Obama personally conducted his own foreign policy more than any president since Richard Nixon. He made all the decisions, because he believed that only he truly understood the issues. He spent his evenings writing decision papers on foreign affairs when, instead, he should have delegated that chore to experts and devoted his time to schmoozing members of Congress and convincing them to support his programs. He still loved making speeches to large, adoring crowds, but he complained to foreign leaders on the QT that he had to waste precious hours talking with “Congressmen from Palookaville.”

“Since the beginning of his administration, Obama hasn’t been able to capture the public's imagination and inspire people to follow him. Vision isn't enough in a president.

- Anonymous Historian

The senior people in his administration proved to be just as inexperienced and inept as Mr. Obama when it came to the business of running the government. Members of his inner circle—David Axelrod, campaign manager David Plouffe, press secretary Robert Gibbs, and éminence grise Valerie Jarrett—had proven their mettle in the dark arts of political campaigning, but they had no serious experience in dealing with public-policy issues. If they could be said to have any policy exposure at all it was their ideological enthusiasms for the left.

Over the two-hour dinner, Mr. Obama and the historians discussed several past presidents. It wasn’t clear from Mr. Obama’s responses which of those presidents he identified with. At one point, he seemed to channel the charismatic John F. Kennedy. At another moment, he extolled the virtues of the “transformative” Ronald Reagan. Then again, it was the saintly Lincoln…or the New Deal’s “Happy Warrior,” Franklin Roosevelt….

Mr. Obama told the historians that he had come up with a slogan for his administration. “I’m thinking of calling it ‘A New Foundation,’ ” he said.

Doris Kearns Goodwin suggested that “A New Foundation” might not be the wisest choice for a motto.

“Why not?” the president asked.

“It sounds,” said Goodwin, “like a woman’s girdle.”

In the wake of the shellacking the Democrats took in the midterm elections in 2010, Mr. Obama held a second dinner with the historians, which was devoted to the question of how he could “reconnect with the public.”

A third dinner took place in July 2011, shortly after Mr. Obama and his team botched the budget-deficit negotiations with Congress, and the United States government lost its Triple-A credit rating for the first time in history. It revolved around the theme “the challenge of reelection.”

That fall, I spoke to one of the historians who attended all three of the dinners. We met in a restaurant where we were unlikely to be seen, and our conversation, which lasted for nearly two hours, was conducted under the condition of anonymity.

I wanted to know how this liberal historian, who had once drunk the Obama Kool-Aid, matched the president’s promise with his performance. By this time, most of Mr. Obama’s supporters were puzzled by the sense of disconnect between the sharply focused presidential candidate of 2008 and the dazed and confused president of the past three years. The satirical TV show "The Onion News Network" had broadcast a faux story that the real Barack Obama had been kidnapped just hours after the election and replaced by an imposter.

“There’s no doubt that Obama has turned out to be a major enigma and disappointment,” the historian told me. “He waged such a brilliant campaign, first against Hillary Clinton in the primaries, and then against John McCain in the general election. For a long time, I found it hard to understand why he couldn’t translate his political savvy into effective governance.

“But I think I know the answer now,” he continued. “Since the beginning of his administration, Obama hasn't been able to capture the public's imagination and inspire people to follow him. Vision isn't enough in a president. Great presidents not only have to enunciate their vision; they must lead by example and inspiration. Franklin Roosevelt spoke to the individual. He and Ronald Reagan had the ability to make each American feel that the president cared deeply and personally about them.

“That quality has been lacking in Obama. People don’t feel that he’s on their side. Obama doesn't connect. He doesn't have the answers. The irony is that he was supposed to be such a brilliant orator. But, in fact, he’s turned out to be a failure as a communicator."

If the verdict of this historian is correct, and Barack Obama’s fundamental failure as president is his inability to connect with people, he is in far more serious trouble than most people realize as he seeks a mandate for a second term in office. Or, as this historian put it: “I wouldn’t bet the ranch on his getting reelected.”

"More than that, Obama might not have the place in history he so eagerly covets. Instead of ranking with FDR and Reagan and other giants, it seems more likely that he will be a case-study in presidential failure like Jimmy Carter."

Edward Klein is the former editor in chief of The New York Times Magazine. His latest book is "The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House." (Regnery 2012)

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/06/08/what-do-historians-really-think-obama/?intcmp=trending#ixzz1xH5zJbVM

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“The notion that my White House would purposely release classified national security information is offensive,”

Obama rejects White House leaking charge

President Obama reacted indignantly Friday to accusations that his aides may have leaked classified details of successful anti-terrorism operations to bolster his national security credentials for the fall reelection campaign.

“The notion that my White House would purposely release classified national security information is offensive,” Mr. Obama told reporters during a press conference at the White House. “It’s wrong, and people I think need to have a better sense of how I approach this office and how the people around me here approach this office.”

Lawmakers in both parties this week called for a special prosecutor to investigate the national security leaks, including a report that detailed the government’s efforts to launch cyberattacks at computers involved in Iran’s uranium-enrichment program, the campaign of U.S. drone attacks in the Middle East and the “hit list” of terrorists that was reportedly reviewed personally by Mr. Obama.

House Homeland Security Chairman Peter T. King, New York Republican, has called the leaks “amateur hour” and said the reports “are like press releases coming from the Oval Office.”

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Diane Feinstein, California Democrat, complained Thursday about an “avalanche” of leaks on national security matters.

“This has to stop,” Mrs. Feinstein said. “When people say they don’t want to work with the United States because they can’t trust us to keep a secret, that’s serious.”

Mr. Obama downplayed calls for an independent investigation, saying his administration is capable of rooting out leakers. He implied that any such leaks may have come from people who no longer work for the government.

“My attitude has been zero tolerance for these kinds of leaks and speculation,” Mr. Obama said. ” We have mechanisms in place, where if we can root out folks who have leaked, they will suffer consequences. We will conduct thorough investigations, as we have in the past.”

He added, “We’re dealing with issues that can touch on the safety and the security of the American people and our families or our military personnel or our allies. So we don’t play with that. It is a source of consistent frustration, not just for my administration but for previous administrations when this stuff happens. And we will continue to let everybody know in government or after they leave government that they have certain obligations that they should carry out.”

Mr. Obama said the authors of the reports that detailed the anti-terrorism operations have backed up his claim that his administration is not to blame.

“The writers of these articles have all stated unequivocally that [the leaks] didn’t come from this White House,” the president said. “That’s not how we operate.”

Quote:
Hi Peter and All ,
Now the state convention is over ,I have a little time to breathe but not for long ! We (the nasty old guard establishment) did a fantastic job of not allowing a complete coup at the Kentucky State GOP convention. Yes, the Paulian loons were all out in full force but due to some snooping <grins> we stopped them dead in their tracks ! That is one for the good guys and gals ! Having said that here is an article I just received and thought you might like to give it a read. Enjoy !
Shalom,
Geketa

Mark Steyn: Eternally shifting sands of Obama's biography

Published: May 18, 2012

By MARK STEYN

Syndicated columnist

It used to be a lot simpler. As E.C. Bentley deftly summarized it in 1905:

"Geography is about maps. But Biography is about chaps."

But that was then, and now Biography is also about maps. For example, have you ever thought it would be way cooler to have been born in colonial Kenya?

Whoa, that sounds like crazy Birther talk; don't go there! But Breitbart News did, and it turns out that the earliest recorded example of Birtherism is from the president's own literary agent, way back in 1991, in the official bio of her exciting new author:

"Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii."

So the lunatic theory that Barack Obama doesn't meet the minimum eligibility requirements to be president of the United States was first advanced by Barack Obama's official representative. Where did she get that wacky idea from? "This was nothing more than a fact-checking error by me," says Obama's literary agent, Miriam Goderich, a "fact" that went so un-"checked" that it stayed up on her agency's website in the official biography of her by-then-famous client up until 2007:

"He was born in Kenya to an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister."

And then in April 2007, someone belatedly decided to "check" the 16-year-old "fact" and revised the biography, a few weeks into the now non-Kenyan's campaign for the presidency. Fancy that!

When it comes to conspiracies, I'm an Occam's Razor man. The more obvious explanation of the variable first line in the eternally shifting sands of Obama's biography is that, rather than pretending to have been born in Hawaii, he's spent much of his life pretending to have been born in Kenya.

After all, if your first book is an exploration of racial identity and has the working title "Journeys In Black And White," being born in Hawaii doesn't really help. It's entirely irrelevant to the twin pillars of contemporary black grievance – American slavery and European imperialism. To 99.99 percent of people, Hawaii is a luxury vacation destination and nothing else.

Whereas Kenya puts you at the heart of what, in an otherwise notably orderly decolonization process by the British, was a bitter and violent struggle against the white man's rule. Cool! The composite chicks dig it, and the literary agents.

And where's the harm in it? Everybody does it – at least in the circles in which Obama hangs. At Harvard Law School, where young Barack was "the first African-American president of The Harvard Law Review," there's no end of famous firsts: As The Fordham Law Review reported, "Harvard Law School hired its first woman of color, Elizabeth Warren, in 1995." There is no evidence that Mrs. Warren, now the Democrats' Senate candidate, is anything other than 100 percent white. She walks like a white, quacks like a white, looks whiter than white. She's the whitest white since Frosty the Snowman fell in a vat of Wite-Out. But she "self-identified" as Cherokee, so that makes her a "woman of color." Why, back in 1984 she submitted some of her favorite dishes to the "Pow Wow Chow" cookbook, a "compilation of recipes passed down through the Five Tribes families."

The recipes from "Elizabeth Warren – Cherokee" include a crab dish with tomato mayonnaise. Mrs. Warren's fictional Cherokee ancestors in Oklahoma were renowned for their ability to spear the fast-moving Oklahoma crab. It's in the state song: "Ooooooklahoma! Where the crabs come sweepin' down the plain." But then the white man came, and now the Oklahoma crab is extinct, and at the Cherokee clambakes they have to make do with Mrs. Warren's traditional Five Tribes recipe for Cherokee Lime Pie.

A delegation of college students visited the White House last week, and Vice President Biden told them: "You're an incredible generation. And that's not hyperbole, either. Your generation and the 9/11 generation before you are the most incredible group of Americans we have ever, ever, ever produced."

Ever ever ever ever! Even in a world where everyone's incredible, some things ought to be truly incredible. Yet Harvard Law School touted Elizabeth "Dances with Crabs" Warren as their "first woman of color" – and nobody laughed. Because, if you laugh, chances are you'll be tied up in sensitivity-training hell for the next six weeks. Because in an ever-more incredible America being an all-white "woman of color" is entirely credible.

Entering these murky waters, swimming through it like a crab in Mrs. Warren's tomato mayo, Barack Obama refined his own identity with a finesse that Harvard Law's first cigar-store Indian lacked. In 1984, when "Elizabeth Warren – Cherokee" was cooking up a storm, the young Obama was still trying to figure out his name: He'd been "Barry" up till then. According to his recently discovered New York girlfriend, back when she dated him he was "BAR-ack," emphasis on the first syllable, as in barracks, which is how his dad was known back in Kenya. Later in the Eighties, he decided "BAR-ack" was too British, and modified it to "Ba-RACK". Some years ago, on Fox News, Bob Beckel criticized me for mispronouncing Barack Obama's name. My mistake.

All I did was say it the way they've always said it back in Kenya. But Obama himself didn't finally decide what his name was or how to say it until he was pushing 30. In the shifting sands of identity, he picked his crabs carefully.

"I suppose he'd had the name ready for a long time, even then," says Nick Carraway in "The Great Gatsby." "His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people – his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself... . So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end."

In a post-modern America, the things that Gatsby attempted to fake – an elite schooling – Obama actually had; the things that Gatsby attempted to obscure – the impoverished roots – merely add to Obama's luster. Gatsby claimed to have gone to Oxford, but nobody knew him there because he never went; Obama had a million bucks' worth of elite education at Occidental, Columbia and Harvard Law, and still nobody knew him ("Fox News contacted some 400 of his classmates and found no one who remembered him"). In that sense, Obama out-Gatsbys Gatsby: His "shiftless and unsuccessful" relatives – the deportation-dodging aunt on public housing in Boston, the DWI undocumented uncle, the $12-a-year brother back in Nairobi – are useful props in his story, the ever more vivid bit-players as the central character swims ever more out of focus, but they don't seem to know him either. The more autobiographies he writes, the less anybody knows.

Like Gatsby presiding over his wild, lavish parties, Obama is aloof and remote: let everyone else rave deliriously; he just has to be. He is, in his way, the apotheosis of the Age of American Incredibility. When just being who you are anyway is an incredible accomplishment, Obama managed to run and win on biography almost entirely unmoored from life. But then, like Gatsby, he knew a thing or two about "the unreality of reality."

©MARK STEYN