The State of an Ingrate

By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog

Last night, appropriately, President Barack Obama ended his second-to-last State of the Union address by celebrating “the country that gave him a chance.”

I agree it’s what makes us great, Save Jerseyans! No doubt about it. There aren’t many countries on the planet where a guy with this President’s background could rise so far and so quickly.

My compound question for POTUS: why did you deliver last night’s speech from the distant, strange, detached Planet Obama?

barack obama state of the unionAnd why has you spent the last six years trying to “transform” it?

Divide it?

Lying to it?

Bankrupting it?

Failing to defend it (when he’s not running it down overseas)?

Reality simply doesn’t jive with everything we heard on Capitol Hill last night. For a moment there, as he tore into a head-scratchingly crazy litany of alleged foreign and domestic triumphs (without any basis in current events – just ask the people of Yemen, the Ukraine, or any U.S. HMO that cancelled policies over the last two years), I couldn’t help but wonder if we were dealing with a Rip Van Winkle phenomenon?

Did this guy fall asleep sometime before Obamacare passed Congress and remained asleep until three or so days ago?

You’re not fooling anyone, sir. Maybe yourself? But that’s precious little comfort for the rest of us.

Bill Clinton, the president who once declared that “There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America,” had the common sense to correct his course and steer towards the center when his party took a drubbing at the polls in November 1994.

The key differences between now and then: (1) Clinton wasn’t an ideologue and (2) he still needed to worry about reelection.

Slick Willy also wasn’t, for all of his many faults, an insufferable ingrate. Bill Clinton, I think with the benefit of hindsight, destroyed the things he loved because he lacked discipline.

You… you’re a curiously spiteful guy, suffocatingly arrogant AND, consequently, a living, breathing contradiction, embodying the American Dream while simultaneously doing everything within your power to deny that dream to the next generation.

The best I can say? I’m glad we only have to sit through one more speech.

Matt Rooney
About Matt Rooney 8390 Articles
MATT ROONEY is SaveJersey.com's founder and editor-in-chief, a practicing New Jersey attorney, and the host of 'The Matt Rooney Show' on 1210 WPHT every Sunday evening from 7-10PM EST.