September 24, 2013
Obama the Storyteller
By Ed Lasky

President Obama unwittingly disclosed his modus operandi in a single statement back in 2012. The sentence explains why he has been able to both win elections and been such a failure once in office.

In the summer of 2012, President Obama refused to take responsibility for failures during his first term. As is his wont, he blamed others. In this case it was not the "usual suspect," Republicans, but all Americans. He told CBS News; Charlie Rose that his biggest mistake of his first term was not being a good enough storyteller:

"The mistake of my first term. . .was thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right. And that's important. But the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism, especially during tough times."

Mitt Romney mocked his answer, "Being president is not about telling stories. Being president is about leading, and President Obama has failed to lead."

But why wouldn't Obama think that success was based on telling stories? After all, his ability to tell stories was key to his string of election victories. He never had much of a record to run on (many Americans overlooked or did not care that his career was marked by "voting present" when not claiming credit for work he did not do) so to fill up a sparse resume he created stories.

As many politicians have done, he published a book "Dreams from My Father; A Story of Race and Inheritance" that served as the foundation of his political biography. Many of his early supporters -- and later ones as well -- were inspired to support him after reading the book. But a book by the Washington Post reporter and highly-regarded biographer David Maraniss confirmed reports from others (including New York Times reporter Janny Scott in her own book, "A Singular Woman," about Obama's mother) that the book was filled with "errors" -- characters that never existed or were "composites," incidents that never happened, girlfriends that never existed, mentors that were misidentified, and more. There was a pattern in the book that became a pattern when Obama became a politician and then the President.

Perhaps the most disturbing fabrication in Obama's book was the tale that he routinely used when pushing ObamaCare and while on the campaign trail of his own mother's death. He blamed insurance companies for denying treatment. This was a blatant lie that he knew was a lie since he served not just as her son but as her lawyer.

During the 2008 presidential debate he peddled this fiction:

For my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they're saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don't have to pay her treatment, there's something fundamentally wrong about that.

Why was this lie more important than any others?

It was a foundational lie; a talisman for all that would follow for, as Victor Davis Hanson so keenly noted, a man who would lie about his own mother's death would "fudge" about anything, and do so shamelessly.

And so he has.

Read more:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/09/o...l#ixzz2fqG7NSSr