So Obama finally made it to Israel. It was great. He saw the sights, gave a few talks, toured ancient holy places, and had a few meetings, but no long hours hammering out a budget, no tense negotiations on entitlement reform, or meeting with his now defunct “jobs council” for an all night brainstorming session. It was photo ops and “behind the velvet rope” tours, and of course, fine dining as the royal taster made the journey as well.

All in all, what most of us would call a great working vacation.

And so, after all that, it was of course time for…

Well, another vacation.

Great.

You know, President Bush used to go to Crawford alot..and he took alot of flak in the media for it… But that was his house, and he had it set up like a second White House, with a war room, communications office, etc..so while it was a vacation, it wasn’t a vacation like this guy takes ’em. He invited and met with dignitaries there, and other heads of state, and while they weren’t Jay-Z or Beyonce, they were names some people thought relevant at the time.. Blair, Putin, Et al. So there was a difference.

There was much I disliked about the former president’s time in office. He spent too much, he compromised with disastrous consequence, and he created more government, when what we needed was less.

But he did seem to hold more reverence for the office than its current occupant. He stopped golf altogether after he sent men to war, he attended his own daily security briefs, he didn’t stoop to partisan name calling from his high office. In fact, other than dictators and terrorists, I don’t think I heard the guy say a bad word about anyone while president.

But what distresses me more than this president taking lots of vacations on the taxpayers dime, and not appearing to feel he needs to exert the kind of daily toil to produce results in a process most of us so quaintly refer to as “work”, is while everyone is being told they need to pay more of their “fair share”, or share in the “pain”, this guy and his wife and kids literally go all over the world on these work “free” vacations, on OUR dime.

Do I even need to mention the Golf? Really? Reeaallyy…

So much, for the proletariat.

One of the true marvels of human history, is how the populist left will always elect as its leaders, the absolutely most bourgeois of the bourgeois, to rule over them. I mean, these guys..Stalin, Lennon, Chavez..they really have a taste for the finer things and could care less about, say, inner city crime, unemployment, education, or least of all, whether the “people’s” dollars and resources are spent wisely.

With that in mind, this has to be the most bourgeois American president, at least in my lifetime, that I have ever seen..and I’m finding, not only do I really not like this guy, I’m finding that its actually turning me off to even the IDEA of a president.

If it’s just supposed to be a pompous ass who tells me how greedy I am, how much I cling to my gun and my bibles, and how everyone needs to pitch in, while he closes down country clubs for a million dollars a day to golf with Tiger.. Or he and his wife take separate jets to an environmental conference.. If that’s what the office is, then that’s it. I’m out.

A “Monarch” for the “Oligarchs”? Because make no mistake, this is not just him, it’s the majority of the folks down there in DC right now. Most of them, were they in his shoes, no matter what color their feet or what letter in parentheses by their name, would be treating the job and the trust we put in that office with a similar lack of dignity and respect, as they do their own, right now.

If you think this is hyperbole or satire, then go there. Watch how they work and what that town is about. Harry Reid and Mark Begich have more in common with Lisa Murkowski and Mitch McConnell, than any of them have with their own constituency. How could they? They pass laws they are exempt from, that you and I have to follow. They have a 90+ percent reelection rate. They spend their careers together and the vast majority of their time there in that town, at “court” with the other lords and ladies and courtesans, lording over their fiefdoms and dukedoms, whiling away their days in relative luxury, safe from the repercussions of their action or inaction because of the power they enjoy and the system that keeps them there.

Their kids go to the same schools, they shop at the same shops, live in the same neighborhoods, get the same fringe benefits, and are typically bought and owned, to one degree or another, by the same interests, on the corporate level, and by mirror image political groups on the “non-profit” level (another joke).

The ruling class.

American Royalty.

Every trite little small government slur to describe the state of our elected officials in federal government, and you know what? If you have ever been there, and seen them, behind the rope, away from the cameras, in the little town houses they keep empty by day and fill with pheasant and wine, congressmen and senators, money men and lobbyists and millionaires deal makers, by night.. then you know.

It’s exactly right.

To say the “majesty of the office” has “lost a bit of its luster”, is a bit of an understatement. It is a sad self parody of what we have let happen to this once great nation. The “joke”, as it were, is on us.

The presidency used to mean something. I’m not so sure it does anymore. Judging by the time the current occupant spends actually doing the job..

I’m not the only one that feels that way.

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Dr Walter Campbell is a lifelong Alaskan, former Marine, and physician.