Hope fades, leaving low expectations

Here’s the bad news for those who held high hopes for Barack Obama’s presidency: If it hasn’t happened by now, it ain’t gonna happen.

The worse news is reserved for those no longer clinging to the “hope and change” bandwagon: There’s still 30 months left to endure the most pretentiously inept (and some might add “devious”) administration in America’s modern history.

Of course, the first four years of the Age of Obama were nothing to write home about — in a good way, I mean. Now with “The One’s” second term well on its way to being wasted even more spectacularly than the first term, it is safe to predict that the dwindling Obama Nation is in for more disappointments.

The horrible miscalculations regarding the initial joke by this president to close Guantanamo Bay “first thing,” and this administration’s overarching failure to turn around the economy and get the middle class back to work are self-evident and go without much need for backup.

It’s current events that will nag supporters of the president going forward. Let’s review.

1. The lie that broke the dam of silence for many Obama critics arrived when it became clear that under Obamacare, people were not able to keep their health plans or their doctors.

Obama promised we could. “Period,” he said. He sold it that way, as did Democrat bigwigs Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and Harry Reid.

They all knowingly told an untruth, and it was subsequently labeled the “Lie of the Year.”

2. Then came the revelation that the Obama administration failed to divulge to Congress all the documents pertaining to the death of the U.S. ambassador to Libya in Benghazi.

A subsequent, unrelated Freedom of Information Act request produced a document that showed the White House spinning CIA intelligence to essentially deceive the American public.

What other documents remain hidden or covered up? No one can tell, but this document is damning enough to give Obamatrons heartburn for a good long while. It puts a pinch of Nixon into the Obama soup.

3. Now comes the news from former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner that the Obama White House asked him in no uncertain terms to lie to the American people about Social Security.

Grab the bromide, Obamatrons.

In his new book, Geithner says:

“I remember during one Roosevelt Room prep session before I appeared on the Sunday shows, I objected when Dan Pfeiffer wanted me to say Social Security didn’t contribute to the deficit. It wasn’t a main driver of our future deficits, but it did contribute. Pfeiffer said the line was a ‘dog whistle’ to the left, a phrase I had never heard before. He had to explain that the phrase was code to the Democratic base, signaling that we intended to protect Social Security.”

This, of course, adds context to the Susan Rice appearance on the Sunday talk shows in which she articulated the lie about Benghazi being related to an Internet video.

As we enter the home stretch of the Obama era, we’re seeing lies become a pattern, not an aberration.

Watching Obamatrons defend these falsehoods by deflecting it on to something President Bush did or did not do is like watching someone trying to catch a cat with a blanket — it’s both humorous and pathetic.

News flash to Obama sycophants — Bush left office in 2009. Whatever he did — good, bad or ugly — is over. This is the seventh-inning stretch in Obama’s ballgame, and it doesn’t take a lot of independent thinking to know things aren’t going well.

You can whine all you want about “Bush, Bush, Bush.” You can deflect Benghazi into a tale about 9/11, if in some twisted way that makes you feel better. Bring up Iraq, if you like. Spit and hiss about Dick Cheney for all the good it will do.

This is Memorial Day Weekend 2014. With only two more Memorial Days left in his presidency, the truth about Obama is spilling out.

There’s enough road behind us now to know that the road ahead doesn’t look much different.

Sherman Frederick, former publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and member of the Nevada Newspaper Hall of Fame, writes a column for Stephens Media. Read his blog at www.reviewjournal.com/columns-blogs/sherman-frederick.