Wile E. Obama and his bag of tricks and anvils...

One of the great things about children’s cartoons is how the characters can do the craziest things and somehow everyone walks away unscathed. How many times has Tweety Bird ended up in Sylvester’s mouth or under a clock only to end the episode smiling as Granny scolded Sylvester? How many times did Scooby Doo and Shaggy seem to be scared into heart attacks only to be back eating in the next scene? Then of course there is Tom & Jerry who seem to spend every episode blowing each other up, or poisoning one another or pounding on one another with hammer. Invariably, regardless of the circumstances, the characters not only survive, but at the beginning of the next episode are as good as new.

Unfortunately for Americans, we’re in the middle of a cartoon, but the end of the episode doesn’t seem to be anywhere in sight and it’s unlikely anyone will escape unscathed. The star of our show however isn’t a superhero like Underdog or Popeye or Roger Ramjet, but rather the monumentally inept Wile E. Coyote. In perhaps the most brilliant piece of typecasting ever, the role of Wile E. Coyote is being played by Barack Obama.

In most cartoons the dynamic has the antagonist spending the episode trying to eat or capture or somehow put an end to the protagonist. They always fail and the hero always wins. In our not so funny cartoon however we have a somewhat different dynamic. The antagonist, in this case Wile E. Obama, fails at virtually every single thing he tries. In the Road Runner cartoon, when Wile E. Coyote fails, we invariably see our hero standing at the side of the shot looking at the mess like when Coyote was stuck in a rock overhang he had just rocketed himself through. Or when Coyote was flat against a rock upon which he had painted a tunnel and into which Road Runner had just run. Or when Coyote is smoldering from a dynamite explosion he had accidentally set off while still holding it.  The Road Runner typically offers his “Beep Beep” and zips down the road leaving a cloud of dust behind.

In our real life cartoon however, when Wile E. Obama sets one of his traps, there is nobody to play the role of the unscathed Road Runner who gets to speed off unencumbered by the anvil Obama has just dropped. Rather, the anvil hits the side of a mountain and touches off an avalanche that buries not only the entire town but the countryside for as far as the eye can see.

Of course the perfect example of Wile’s abilities is Obamacare. Sold on the contention that there were 45 million Americans who were unable to afford or qualify for healthcare, Wile E. Obama crafted a “fix” that would have made cartoonist Rube Goldberg proud… except that unlike a Rube Goldberg contraption, it dosen’t actually work. Instead of figuring out a solution to how to solve the problem for whatever the true number of uninsurable was, he crafted a fix that upended the health insurance system for 315 million people. And of course he lied and obfuscated in order to get the anvil to the top of the hill. Then, promising it would only land on the rich, who can afford it, he pushed his anvil off the cliff. Those below watched in horror as the anvil hit the side of the mountain and started a landslide that buried and burdened everyone as far as the eye could see. Those who thought they could keep their plans couldn’t. Those who thought their costs were going to drop by $2,500 got a rude awakening. Those who thought it would be easy to sign up found it wasn’t. And worst of all - but not surprising - only a tiny fraction of the people the bill was supposed to help ended up actually being helped. Obamacare is the equivalent of Wile E. Coyote stringing a rope between two trees in order to trip up the Road Runner but instead starting a domino effect that knocks down every tree in the country.

Unfortunately the Obamacare anvil is not the only weapon in Wile E. Obama’s bag of tricks. There’s also the dynamite sticks that he has used to alienate friends and embolden enemies. There’s the crayon he used to draw signs of Uncle Sam waiting in the desert with open arms, welcoming illegal immigrants. There’s the trick compass he used to turn the American space agency into a Kumbaya circle intended to build Muslim self esteem. Finally of course there is the Purple Pen he borrowed from Harold (and added a little ink from Karl Marx) to write a virtual spider web of red tape regulations with which to incapacitate not only the Road Runner, but every entrepreneur and businessman who might deign to try and start or grow a business.

The result of Wile E. Obama’s machinations is a record number of people on welfare and food stamps, the smallest Navy since World War II, an economy that can’t seem to get out of neutral and a healthcare plan that not only doesn’t work, but somehow ends up destroying millions of jobs and kicks millions of people off the insurance policies they liked in the first place. Before this episode has concluded he will have run up more debt than the accumulated total of every president before him from George Washington through his predecessor George W. Bush.

Let’s hope that when this episode is over the next can begin as if this nightmare had never happened and all the vestiges of Wile E. Obama’s failures nowhere to be seen. Maybe then we can move back to a place of normalcy where heroes, particularly those with initials RR, rule the day and the only person the bad guy injures with his bag of tricks is himself. Beep Beep!