by Victor Davis Hanson
NRO’s The Corner
When President Obama virtually ceases all new federal oil and gas leasing on public property, why would he then brag that despite his efforts, private companies on private land increased U.S. oil and gas production to new highs? Is the logic something like, “Thank God, my opponents ignored my efforts and therefore lessened the country’s dependence on energy imports”? When he embraced or expanded almost all the Bush-Cheney anti-terrorism protocols he once blasted as unnecessary or unlawful, did his logic run thusly: “Guantanamo, renditions, detentions, drones, tribunals, and the Patriot Act were so bad that I was obligated to keep them in force”? Or why would he boast that illegal entries into the United States had at one point dipped to new lows — obviously not due to his various orders limiting deportations, but rather due to the static American economy. Is that logic, “Thanks to my near-record long economic slowdown, illegal aliens now prefer to stay home”? Now in Mexico he is assailing his domestic opponents while on foreign soil, describing the Second Amendment as a sort of quaint oddity, while blaming his own country for the gun violence in Mexico. Is the logic here, “I know very well that American guns find their way into the hands of Mexican killers, because my administration took elaborate efforts to sell such weapons to such criminals”? Is Joe Biden writing these speeches?
