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Why the Presidents big speech on the NSA is a waste of time

Man with glasses lamenting the NSA scandal.
Man with glasses lamenting the NSA scandal.
Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

In 2008, then candidate Barrack Obama railed on hope and change. Part of what he was hoping to change, according to him, was this issue of transparency in Washington. Since then, he has drug us through a murky swamp of misdirection and deception that has lasted for over five years now; literally being the least transparent President in history.

Then, in July of 2013, Mr. Snowden enters the picture. While the President lectures us on transparency, and simultaneously does things like restricts White House access for journalists, Edward Snowden exposes the fact that his administration is monitoring US citizens on an unprecedented scale. Snowden also releases information stating that our government regularly spies on the leaders of other sovereign nations, most notably Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, which the White House obviously denies.

With all that we have been through over the last five years: the IRS scandal, Benghazi, the NSA scandal, the Obama Care claims that were slightly less-than-truthful as well as handful of other dubious endeavors, does anyone really put a lot of weight on what is going to be said by the winner of Politifacts the 2013 Lie Of The Year Award?

After all, The Affordable Care Act was just a piece of legislation that Obama wanted to pass. While this is speculation, I would propose that Obama thinks his plan is in the best interest of the country so he did what needed to be done to pass it.

Fast forward a few years, with the same administration, and we expect Obama to come clean on a top-secret program that was only revealed to the citizens of America by man who is now wanted for treason and in asylum in Russia? A program that has had it’s fate decided in the nothing-but-transparent secret court case that it allegedly went through?

The cold, hard truth is: Presidents do and say what they need to in order to move the country in the direction they think it needs to go. While normally, they are somewhat limited by the media, our Constitution, and public perception, this is quite different; the media and public can’t even know what’s going on removing that, or the Constitution for that matter, from the equation, and Obama’s approval and trust ratings are in the 30’s.

The public perception may be important if it was his first term, but Obama will never need to run for office again. Ultimately, he is accountable to nobody. Whether you have to run for office again or not, the law is what keeps politicians more or less in line when all other options fail, however with regards to the top secret program, nobody knows enough of what’s going on to apply the law.

Either way, the result is the same: Obama can and will say whatever he wants and we will have no way of knowing whether it’s true or not. While it may be unfair to assume he wouldn’t be 100% honest with the American public, it has unfortunately been proven several times over already. Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice…

At the end of the day, American’s have to accept there are certain things in their government that they are not going to be privy to. We aren’t talking about how education reform affects becoming a teacher or the unemployment rate; we are talking about top-secret, classified programs that we aren’t even supposed to know exist.