Obama “Too Busy Getting Stuff Done” to Listen to His Boss?

Somewhere along the road to the White House, Barack Obama lost sight of the true nature of his employment relationship with American people. He works for them, not the other way around.  The attitude du jour was brilliantly captured by Obama’s declaration, in January 2009, “I won!” and Nancy Pelosi’s inimitable, partisan echo, “Yes, we won the election!”  Kind of like, “Mission accomplished!” (Flashback video below.)

Obama’s oversight came home to roost, Tuesday, in Massachusetts, where the country’s most blue state told Obama in essence, “You and your cronies can go to hell.” So much for “I won.” For thinking Democrats — Jim Webb, Evan Bayh and Barney Frank come to mind — Tuesday was a wake-up call. Not so for Mr. Obama who made it clear Wednesday night that he still doesn’t get it.

His interview with George Stephanopolous was remarkable for its arrogance and tone-deafness. Strangely, Mr. Obama expressed “regret” that during his first year, he and his staff were

… so busy just getting stuff done and dealing with the immediate crises that were in front of us that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values.

“We lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their cores values are…” Huh? “Sense of speaking directly”? The phrase itself is absurdly opaque and disingenuous. It offers a glimpse into Obama’s fundamental communications problem. He doesn’t listen and doesn’t want to. And when he talks, he words fall out encrypted and hedged in ways his hearers can’t possibly avoid misunderstanding. How does one foster a “sense of speaking directly” to his boss?

Employees don’t “talk to” their bosses about “what their core values are.” They listen respectfully and attentively and repeat the message just to be sure they hear correctly. Yet, to hear Obama tell it, Tuesday’s catastrophic electoral defeat came about because somehow we the people failed to hear from “our President” what we should be thinking and how we should be voting. Some people never change.

Now, about that “too busy getting stuff done” line. What exactly has Mr. Obama been busy doing since January 2009? Here’s a short list: bailing out fat-cat bankers with trillions in taxpayer funds, insulting key allies — U.K., France, Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, and Norway all come to mind, fiddling with unnecessary health care “reform” while the economy burns around our ears, stoking racial friction by insulting Cambridge, Mass. cops then drinking beers with them, jetting off to Copenhagen not once but twice for failed international diplomacy — first, for Chicago’s failed Olympics bid and later for high-level, carbon-intensive, futile chit-chat (in the midst of record snowfall, no less) about how to cool off the planet, repeatedly allowing terrorists to attack within the United States for the first time since say, 2001, and, finally, giving aid and comfort to Iran and North Korea in their efforts to proliferate nuclear weapons.

It has been a busy schedule, hasn’t it? For this level of accomplishment, most employees would be fired forthwith. Oh, wait! That’s exactly what happened, Tuesday, in Massachusetts.