Is Obama acting like a former president?

It looks like we have officially entered the world of the post-Obama presidency. President Obama’s recent speeches and remarks make it obvious that he is not making any serious effort to govern or to drive world events. Except for covering the basics, he seems to have taken something like an early retirement.

We can look back at his West Point speech, which may go down in history as his first post-presidency speech, and the endpoint of an Obama foreign policy. During that speech, the president’s reflections on his foreign policy consisted of making excuses and trying to explain himself instead of conveying any forward-looking policy.

In a campaign style event last week, the president revealed even more of a state of mind that suggests he has checked out. He told the audience that he is “finding lately that I just want to say what’s on my mind.” That sounds more like an idle comment from a retired, unengaged former president than something a president in command would say. Obama then went on to petulantly declare that the reason for his failures is because Republicans “don’t do anything except block me. And call me names.” Can you imagine any other president in our history making that excuse? Remember, President Ronald Reagan had a divided government every day he was in office, but he still managed to work with Congress to pass major legislation. He certainly never whined about being called names by his critics. Neither did Bush 41, Clinton or Bush 43.

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