RUTHFULLY YOURS

We are led by a bunch of juveniles — led straight into a ditch that will take a long time to crawl out of, assuming we get a good president in 2017 (a big assumption given the ongoing slow motion Clinton coronation).

The White House apparently believes the way to lead is by getting out the coloring books and cameras. True, we live in a visual age with a SnapChat attention span but does an agenda have to be reduced to the lowest common denominator? Can’t the greatest communicator on earth educate and inform instead of distract and prevaricate? Can’t a team that takes many billions of dollars of taxpayer money come up with a better way to formulate and pitch policy than relying on tweets and silliness?

Instead we get comments such as “dude that was two years ago” to explain away the Benghazi disaster and divert blame from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton form a former van driver turned National Security Council spokesman, Tommy Vietor. We get the same drivel from failed short-story writer Ben Rhodes — who has become a key foreign policy makers because … I cannot figure that answer out, but it might have something to do with sycophancy, a talent for lying that Obama (who, after all, lied about his own mother’s death for political purposes and clearly feels no compunction about serial lying ) values in people, and a brother who heads up CBS News.

Talent is a job-killer for people wanting to work in the White House. But skill at Adobe Photoshop and reducing complex foreign policy and other issues to 140 characters helps. Simple-mindedness is a must, along with a touch of mendacity.

For this is the mindset of the adolescents running this administration. Of course, this team knows their base the best, so maybe they calculate (and they are a calculating lot) that this is the way to build support among many Democrats.

Just to recap a brief history:

We had a campaign based entirely on slogans and photos. We had Hope and Change; Yes We Can; We are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For. And other meaningless gibberish-including emails with led by informative hard-hitting subject lines along the lines of “Hey.” For more of this electronic litter see “15 best Obama email subject lines.”

To sell ObamaCare we had Pajama Boy: An insufferable Man-Child, in Rich Lowry’s words.

Obama’s reelection featured the cartoonish “The Life of Julia,” the story of a cradle to grave life blessed by the soul-sucking policies of Obama

Last week, President Obama’s campaign launched a fictional storybook ad called, “The Life of Julia.” The slide show narrative follows Julia, a cartoon character, from age 3 to age 67 and explains how Obama’s policies, from Head Start to Obamacare to mandated contraception coverage to Medicare reform, would provide Julia with a better life than Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan could.

Julia is not your typical all-American girl, but an obviously independent, yuppie liberal woman. She goes to public school, graduates college, and becomes a Web designer. She is able to pursue her career because, at age 27, “her health insurance is required to cover birth control and preventive care, letting Julia focus on her work rather than worry about her health.”

At age 31 she “decides to have a child,” with no mention of a father or husband. Her son Zachary heads off to a Race to the Top funded public school, while Julia goes on to start her own Web business. She retires at age 67 with Social Security and Medicare supporting her financially and spends her later years volunteering in a community garden.

Her life was a fairy tale remarkably void of reality and thus well-aimed to capture the votes of the low-information (or no-info voter or wrong-info voter). Bill Bennett fact-checked and injected some “uncomfortable truths” into the argument. Of course, younger votes don’t have the faintest idea who Bennett is and relied on the narrow-streaming spewed out by the Obama campaign.

But wait there is more!

A senior White House official thinks Saudi Arabia shares a border with Syria (Obama thinks Hawaii is in Asia, so perhaps we must give the official a break).

A van driver can become a senior advisor – and this is another van driver different from Tommy Vietor.

The White House team apparently thought the likes of former KBG chairman Vladimir Putin could be swayed by the same simpleton ideas.

There was the infamous Red Reset Button:

Note to self: When trying to improve ties with a former Cold War-era foe, check a dictionary.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton learned that lesson the hard way Friday when she presented Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with a gift bearing an incorrect translation — one that implied hostility, rather than peacemaking.

Clinton presented Lavrov with a gift-wrapped red button, which said “Reset” in English and “Peregruzka” in Russian. The problem was, “peregruzka” doesn’t mean reset. It means overcharged, or overloaded.

And Lavrov called her out on it.

Really? Will that stunt go down as one of the silliest State Department ideas ever? Does anyone think the former head of the KGB looked at this red button as anything other than a green light to go on the march?

They couldn’t even get that right? Can’t they even use Google Translator? And, by the way, the red button was ripped off from a hotel in a sophomoric stunt. How fitting.

Barack Obama is notoriously insular. He won’t talk with experts or leaders from not just the Republican Party but also the Democratic Party. But he did make time to chat with the Pimp with a Limp; hang out with rappers who just happened to drop by the White House situation room — a historic room turned into a rapper selfie photo shoot; play hoops with NBA stars and, needless to say, golfs with his chef, among others.

Good Grief, as Charlie Brown might comment: there is no shame in this White House and certainly no respect for the office or the responsibilities of the presidency.

The Gang That Could Not Shoot Straight marked another notch in its popgun with the execrable and incompetent State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki.

After the invasion of Ukraine she and the White House responded resolutely by sending out tweets and hashtags: Hashtag Diplomacy That Had Putin Shaking in his boots:

Tweets, hashtags, and Facebook postings have replaced serious communication, just as they have for so many teenagers. That is not a good sign. Nor is it a healthy sign that Obama and his team seem to spend a lot of time tossing footballs (at least they are not Nerf ones) in the Oval Office, playing cards, and watching sports.

No wonder Obama makes decisions by checking off boxes on multiple choice memos handed to him. They are easier than real thinking.

When Bill O’Reilly mentioned he thought Jen Psaki was out of her depth (a commonly held view among foreign policy veterans) another of Obama’s appointees, Marie Harf, went on a junior-high school like rampage for her BFF.

As the midterms approach America is being subject to a new low in the puerile policies of the White House.

The Obama administration even planned to use emojis to reach out to young voters. This is not a joke, but rather taking Valerie Jarrett’s advice to use simpler words one step farther – using pictures instead of words. No Joke: Obama Admin To Use Emojis To Reach Out To Young Voters…

The excellent weaselzippers website caught this one and commented “It’s come to this…”

But is has been like that for years with goofy emails asking Obama supporters to wish Barack a Happy Birthday or the Obama’s a Happy Anniversary-along with some campaign money.

Via BuzzFeed:

The White House is preparing a new emoji-based social media campaign to make its economic pitch to young people, BuzzFeed News has learned.

Starting Thursday, White House social media accounts will blast out charts, graphs, and yes, emojis, aimed at catching the eye of young voters weeks before the November elections.

In the face of ridicule, the White House has dropped the emojis idea.  However, their prior plans are scary glimpse into the minds of those running the nation.

I recently heard a pundit declare how hard it was to get into the mind of Obama. Why? There seems to be a lot of space there.

Leon Panetta, esteemed by people on both sides of the aisle with a career history of serving the public that makes Obama’s look as thin as his ectomorph body type, writes a memoir critical of the president’s leadership. One of the goals was to encourage Obama make better decisions in the two years left in his term.

Instead of logically and rationally addressing the issues raised, Bill Burton — Obama’s former deputy Press Secretary and now full-time political hack — slurs Panetta with a name-calling blitz: Panetta, according to the man-child (who does resemble Pajama Boy), Bill Burton is “dishonorable” “Sad’ Small and Petty.” He must be taking talking points from his former boss, Barack Obama, who routinely taunts and mocks political opponents in a manner that disgraces his office.

The world’s tyrants and terrorists look at this and mock Obama and America.

Here is Putin’s retort-in visual form:

As Instapundit Glenn Reynolds often sarcastically notes “we are in the best of hands”.

Bullies and predators prey on weakness, and such a pathetic approach to the presidency invites contempt and aggression. The lack of gravitas is historic. And perilous.

America will be paying the price empowering these people for many years to come.