Our Ill-Mannered President

Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal wrote an op-ed, "The GOP's Female Trouble," noting that Democrats get away with gender politics because Republicans have shied away from speaking directly to women about matters of interest to them as women.

It isn't as if Democrats are in tune with today's woman. The Obama campaign is serving a straight-up 1970s feminist agenda: contraception, abortion, equal pay. In this world view, women can't and don't think much beyond their reproductive apparatus. Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter this week went so far as to explain that women "aren't really concerned about what's happened over the past four years." Unemployment, gas prices, ObamaCare-these are not the concerns of women.

That outlook is offensive to every woman who spends 18-hour days wrestling the job, the house, the kids, the bills. Yet Democrats get away with it for one reason: Women appreciate that they are being spoken to directly. Decades of an aversion to "gender politics" has, by contrast, left the GOP with the antiquated view that it shouldn't address women directly on issues that matter specifically to them.

So what does matter to women?  For one thing, they are the keepers of civilization. They are the people who take newborn infants and civilize them.  They teach good manners to their children.  They form the heart of their households.  You would not know that saying "Please" and "Thank you" were good manners if not for what you learned at your mother's knee.

President Obama is remarkably ill-mannered.  Try to think of the last time you heard him say please or thank you.  Now imagine how hard the task of teaching your children good manners becomes if the most powerful man in the world is a lout.  We've been down this road before, when President Bill Clinton stood before the nation and averred that he did not "have sex with that woman."  And that "it depends on what the meaning of 'is' is."

Any mother should recognize the signs.  Have you ever asked a child who it was that did something naughty and gotten the response "not me"?  Has one sibling tried to evade responsibility by shifting the blame to another sibling -- "Bush did it"?  Have the children got into bouts of name-calling?  Ever met a child who was a selfish hog?

If you want to instill respect for civilization in your children, you need examples of good behavior.  One reason why the military is held in such high regard by politicians of all stripes is because the individual soldier, sailor, airman, or marine is unfailingly polite.  And respect for others is the foundation of a functioning society.  The military works because it is suffused with respect for oneself (honor) and for others (duty).

Examples of President Obama's ill-mannered personality abound.

• He has tried to take the honor that belongs to SEAL Team Six and appropriate it for himself.
• He asked for any help he could get to deal with the Gulf Oil spill, and when volunteers, such as myself, stepped forward with solutions -- specifically the static kill -- he could not bear the thought of saying "thank you" to me or to any of the many others who did the work he wanted done.
• When the military performed brilliantly in implementing Operation Tomodachi (Japanese for "friend"), the relief effort in the wake of the Tsunami that saw quick action to regain control of the Fukushima Dai-Ici nuclear power plant, did President Obama say thank you to LCDR Derek Peterson? Or did he instead use the opportunity to excuse his poor economic performance with the American economy by blaming the effects of the tsunami in Japan?

Contrast what President Obama actually did with what he could have done.  He could simply have thanked LCDR Peterson by noting his actions, as captured by this excerpt from the report in the Supervisor of Salvage's publication Faceplate:

16 March After many hours of calculations, engineering analysis, and NAVSEA engineering support it was determined that a minimum of two high volume/low pressure diesel Hydraulic Submersible Salvage Pumps in series with two high pressure/low volume diesel Hydraulic Submersible Salvage pumps from NAVSEA's Emergency Ship Salvage Material (ESSM) warehouse in Sasebo, Japan were the best option to provide support to the cooling of the Fukushima reactors. Five 6-inch Hydraulic (high pressure/low volume and low pressure/high volume) Diesel Hydraulic Submersible Salvage Pumping Systems (w/kit) arrived at Yokota air base.

17 March At 0300 training was provided to the Japanese government and Fukushima power plant employees on the ESSM pump operations and configurations. The equipment then departed on five 5-ton flatbed trucks later that morning bound for the Fukushima power plant.

That is the kind of humble account you expect of a true hero, a man, who went to the assistance of a helpless nation and, through his actions, helped stop the emissions of radioactive iodine threatening the health of tens of thousands of Japanese infants.

Sadly, that is not what you get from Barack Obama. He did not even say "thank you."  So, ladies, whom do want for your president -- a man or a spoiled brat?