Hart Talk, May 30, 2009

Matinee idol and teen heartthrob Barack Obama is getting a harsh lesson in the difference between running for president with focus group-approved, political rhetoric and the reality of making tough decisions with consequences. As always, the devil is in the details. And, in this case, the devil is called "detainees."

It is always easier to be liberal and idealistic when you do not actually have to deliver anything. So far, Obama has done the easy things. He built a playground at the White House for his daughters, picked out a puppy for them, apologized for his country to the world ad nauseum, and said he was going to shut down Guantanamo Bay.

Obama then put more debt on us than all presidents before him with his "stimulus bill," which was only about redistributing tax dollars to his favored constitutes. Spending money is fun, just ask George Bush.

Then Obama magnanimously signed the Credit Cardholder's Bill of Rights, reversing what Chris Dodd, Congress, and the government-controlled business oligopoly called "credit card issuers" had been allowed to do for years.

Obama called their practices "egregious predatory lending" perpetrated by big business on unsuspecting consumers. I think the U.S. Constitution and all business law for the past 250 years call it "a contract between two consenting parties."

Now come the hard decisions.

It seems that Dick Cheney in an attempt to defend his legacy against the constant attacks of the one-sided media is channeling his best "Batman" villain, "The Penguin" (Burgess Meredith-style), to square off with Obama on torture and what to do with the 240 terrorists currently guests at our tropical all-inclusive resort in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

My money is on the guy who shot the lawyer in the face.

In short, Obama views torture anything more than nicely asking a terrorist for information on Al-Qaeda.

Obama tends to think there is a positive side to all murdering terrorists. I am not sure that Obama wouldn't say, "Yes, I know Khalid Sheikh Mohammed murders people and is calling for death to America, but people should know he never forgets a birthday."

And with the Democrats abandoning him when it comes to relocating the Gitmo detainees to any of their states (ditto for Europe), Obama has taken a hawkish turn. Maybe it started when he ordered the Navy SEALs to shoot those Somali pirates.  So far that is the only cool thing he has done, other than spend $325,000 to have Air Force One buzz New York.

It is always the simple questions we fail to ask that become a problem. When Obama signed the order to close Gitmo, he was asked what he was going to do with the detainees there.  I distinctly remember him looking up at one of his puppeteer teleprompter handlers named Greg and asking, "Was there an Executive Order as to what we plan to do with the detainees?" 

I knew then we were in trouble.

About that time, I suggested that a way to mainstream our Gitmo guests into the real world was to slowly integrate them into the New York City cab driver training program.  Liberal New Yorkers should not mind, since these guys are just victims.

The other solution would be to put them into the burgeoning American prison system. The risk there is that they might get converted to Islam.

Obama spends most of his time telling us that every issue before him is a "mess he inherited" and blaming Bush. But what to do with the terrorists after announcing he was closing the expensive facility we built to house them at Gitmo ($200 mil-plus, wasted) is a problem of his own making.  It's sort of a "ready, fire, aim" sequence, where ideology meets the harsh reality of the practical; the first of many such meetings.

Ron Hart is a Southern libertarian columnist and private investor. His email is: RevRon10@aol.com or visit www.ronaldhart.com.