Feet to the Fire or Run for the Mud

As we head for the state of the union address tonight I have my concerns. Indications are that president Obama has decided to talk to the people’s concerns and put his previous agenda on hold and focus more on what the poles have been telling him. A smart move if he does but here is my concern. His purpose is not grounded in the integrity the office has historically been successful for. You should understand Obama’s thinking as he enters to give his speech tonight. Note this article in Politico and what Obama says of himself.

Democrats say they’ve been completely focused on the danger of a populist backlash for months. One retiring Democrat — Rep. Marion Berry of Arkansas — told his local paper that Obama dismissed his concerns in a private meeting by saying the party would avoid a 1994-type debacle because of Obama’s personal popularity. “The president himself, when that was brought up in one group, said, ‘Well, the big difference here and in ’94 was you’ve got me,’” Berry told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

This displays the arrogance Obama offend exudes and seen most times during his campaign and first year in the white house. Compare that with our first president.


However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

GEORGE WASHINGTON, Farewell Address, Sep. 17, 1796

He is polite with dignity, affable without formality, distant without haughtiness, grave without austerity; modest, wise and good.

Abigail Adams, in a letter to John Adams, 1789

More than all, and above all, Washington was master of himself. If there be one quality more than another in his character which may exercise a useful control over the men of the present hour, it is the total disregard of self when in the most elevated positions for influence and example.

Charles Francis Adams (18 August 1807 – 21 November 1886)

No matter what Mr. Obama may say tonight and it may very well be what the majority of people wish to hear, remember the character it comes from and understand it is based on situational ethics and not deep seated integrity our nation was founded on. We will need to keep his feet to the fire because he would rather run to the mud.