Obama & The Neutering Of NASA

"We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.......I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth."

- President John F. Kennedy

"President Obama has ordered me to pursue three new objectives: to re-inspire children to study science and math, to expand our international relationships, and to reach out to the Muslim world........Of those three goals the mission to reach out to Muslims is perhaps foremost, because it will help Islamic nations feel good about their scientific accomplishments."

"The United States is no longer capable of reaching beyond low earth orbit without help from other nations."

- NASA administrator Charles Bolden in a recent interview with al-Jazeera

Two Democrat presidents; two entirely different world-views. That's no accident. In a previous post, I had remarked over a year ago that President Obama - after having gutted the manned spaceflight components of NASA's mission - was on track to make this once great agency a mere extension of the Environmental Protection Agency. Now, apparently, he wants to make it an extension of The Peace Corps. According to Obama lackey Charles Bolden, NASA's three primary objectives have absolutely nothing to do with the exploration of space. And thus, we should not be surprised by Bolden's other statements, particularly that we lack the ability to get beyond low earth orbit without help from other nations.

Now, I wouldn't entirely dispute that, but for different reasons than Bolden. See, it's mighty hard to get beyond Earth orbit when you cancel the very programs designed to get you beyond Earth orbit. And there's also the question of funding. NASA - along with the military - has been the Democrat's favorite program to starve so as to create more welfare funding. As a current reminder, this is the administration that has already spent $75 billion in the past year just helping the states meet payroll for the Education Guild. That's three times NASA's annual budget, pissed away so our bloated Education bureaucracy can maintain their full time pay for part time jobs. Is it any wonder Obama doesn't think NASA is up to fulfilling its primary mission?

This is the guy whose vision is so small, whose objectives so infantile, whose world-view so constipated, that the notion of doing in 2019 what we had already done in 1969 is beyond his ability to conceive. Kind of makes you wonder what else is likely beyond Obama's vision? What else does he suppose America is incapable of doing that it has done before? The mind boggles at the prospects, but OffHisMeds offers a few anyway:

- Defeating the Soviet Union. Ronald Reagan - when asked about his strategy for dealing with the Soviet Union - famously declared "simple: we win, they lose". Such an economy of words to define an ultimately winning strategy, as Reagan then methodically and almost single-handedly went about the task of dismantling - peacefully - the most dangerous empire in the history of the world.

- USA's Olympic hockey victory of 1980. Unheralded, untested, underequipped, undersized and completely inexperienced at hockey as it is played internationally, the "Miracle On Ice" nonetheless is very much a part of our nation's athletic lore. It's not hard to imagine that Obama's reaction to that victory would be to bemoan American Exceptionalism, and agonize about the overt displays of patriotism, much less the effect it would have on our relations with other countries.

- Building the Panama Canal. This one is a no-brainer. Obama would have apologized for it, much as Jimmie Carter did when he gave it away. And prior to being built, he would have declared that it was futile, given that France had failed in a previous attempt to create a canal connecting the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. He would also have worried that our success at doing so might have an adverse impact on our relations with France, and would then, undoubtedly, have blathered on about the effect on their self-esteem were we to succeed.

- Victory in World War II. FDR declared December 7th "a day which shall live in infamy"; then he declared war on the Japanese. No such straight rhetorical lines could exist from Obama's narrow perspective. The guy who is incapable of conceiving that Radical Islam is at war with freedom and democracy is also the guy who could feel some empathy for the Japanese empire, and would likely have equivocated for months after the attack, as he did about the Afghanistan surge. The guy who prostrated himself before our enemies and confessed America's sins is likely the guy that would have agonized over how America might have provoked The Empire Of The Rising Sun.

- The Marshall Plan. Now, this one Obama would have been all over, as it involved giving Trillions of dollars to other countries, which just happens to be one of his favorite past-times. Whether it's Liquidity Swaps to rescue the Euro, subsidies to the IMF for the bailout of Greece and the rest of Europe, military subsidies, the hyper-production of greenbacks or outright cash payments, nothing warms the heart of a Democrat like enslaving the American Taxpayer to a bunch of self-righteous Elitist humps with their hands out. Obama's spin, however, would have been to let the Euros, the Democrat Party and some version of the United Nations manage the spending, a mistake that Marshall most emphatically did not make.

- The 1969 New York Mets. They were proclaimed the "Miracle Mets", having won the 1969 World Series after having posted their first winning season in team history. Ironically, this group of hardy over-achievers reached this fabulous milestone the same year that NASA sent a man to the moon. Talk about symmetry; talk about common angels; talk about a reaffirmation of the Stuff that makes America great. The Mets and NASA weren't just metaphors for the Can-Do, pull yourself up by your bootstraps ethic that defined America; they were the living embodiment of it. By comparison, has Obama ever once exhorted his fellow Americans to Entrepreneurialism, self-sufficiency or fabulous achievement? Hardly. Could not fair-minded people all agree that his every exhortation has called on America to settle for mediocrity?

Obama, after all, is constantly talking about the things that America cannot do, whether it's space travel, defeating the Taliban or safely drilling for oil in the Gulf. He is Jimmie Carter's "Malaise" speech on steroids. As is so amply reflected with his policies for NASA, with his every proclamation and policy, President Obama projects his own insecurity, self-doubt and moral ambiguity onto his adopted nation and his fellow citizens. Is it too much to ask that he works out these issues sometime other than regular business hours, and concentrate on his day job?

Providing NASA a mission other than Muslim outreach might be a good start.