Does Harris’ defeat end the Wizard of Oz’s career?

Two years after the 1945 death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt – thrice elected president – and the ascendancy of Vice President Harry Truman to the Oval Office, Congress approved the 22nd Amendment limiting the number of terms a president can serve to two. Ratified in 1951, the amendment was recommended by the Hoover Commission, which Truman had created to explore ways of reforming the federal government – only one of 273 suggested reforms.

It is interesting that for almost three-quarters of a century now – ever since the Truman presidency, with one exception – voters have alternated between political parties in electing a new president after a re-elected president completed his second term. The only exception is the 12-year tenure Republicans enjoyed between 1981-1993 when George H.W. Bush was elected to office for one term after Ronald Reagan had served two.

Such alternating between the parties suggests Americans are in constant demand of life improvement, only willing to extend a party’s influence beyond a two-term presidency if they are so contented. While Bush 41 pretty much steered the country in the direction set by Reagan and also won the Persian Gulf War, it was the public’s discontent with the economy that limited him to a single term in office, ending Republicans’ 12-year reign.

It has been traditional for outgoing presidents, after having reached the pinnacle of political success, to depart the Washington, D.C., area, leaving one’s successor to either stay the course or to set his own. This, however, was not the case with President Barack Obama who sought to continue quietly exercising his influence from behind a curtain, similar to the Wizard of Oz. It is intriguing that, in wielding such influence, Obama’s game plan has been derailed twice by the same man’s presidential election – i.e., Donald Trump.

In the 2016 presidential election, pitting Obama’s former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, against Trump, the former president undoubtedly anticipated a Hillary victory and his involvement in helping her select influencers in her administration who shared Obama’s long-term plans for America. Those plans sought to make good on his vow about “fundamentally transforming” the country – a goal he would influence as a shadow president. Unfortunately, we failed to realize back then that by such a vow, he intended “to destroy our traditional way of life. …”

But Trump’s surprise 2016 win foiled those plans.

Undeterred, Obama stuck it out, helping his former vice president, Joe Biden, defeat Trump in the 2020 presidential election. It was Obama who then encouraged Biden to select Kamala Harris as his running mate, despite better qualified Democrats for the position. However, Obama most definitely had his personal interests in mind by pressing Biden to select her as he rightfully perceived her as non-energetic and thus easily malleable. He saw her as clay in his hands he could manipulate as she lacked the personal drive to do the heavy lifting necessary as Biden’s No. 2. Thus, the Biden/Harris administration presented Obama with the ideal opportunity to exert his influence from behind the curtain.

While Biden’s rapid mental decline in office was unexpected, Obama became a Biden/Harris administration puppet master. He recognized, however, the more Democrats defended Biden’s mental state, the more it was becoming a liability issue in the 2024 presidential election. Obama, along with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, knew they had to act to get Biden to withdraw from the race without making it look like he was being pressured to do so. Using the threat of exercising the 25th Amendment to remove him from office for the mental incompetency they would not publicly acknowledge, Obama and Pelosi left Biden with little choice other than to make it appear he was voluntarily withdrawing.

The cover story was that Biden was still fully mentally competent and was stepping down in favor of younger leadership. Pelosi suggested it was a courageous thing for Biden to do, ridiculously proclaiming his face should be added to Mount Rushmore – a suggestion mocking the famous landmark and, fortunately, one impossible anyway to undertake from an engineering standpoint.

But Obama had now opened the door to unconstitutionally replace Biden with Harris. Although she had never won a primary, it allowed Obama to continue his influence possibly for the next eight years. But the Wizard of the Democrat Party made a costly mistake at this point, sounding the death knell for Kamala’s presidential campaign. Perhaps viewing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as his ticket to ensuring America’s radical transformation, Obama urged Harris to select him over Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as her running mate. Selecting the latter most likely would have delivered Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes to Harris.

But, undoubtedly in Obama’s mind, a Nov. 5 Harris/Walz win and re-election victory in 2028 would have enabled him to maintain his shadow presidency for 12 more years. Obama’s eight years in office plus his four years as a shadow president under Biden plus eight more under a Harris/Walz administration was obviously way beyond the time limit established by the authors of the 22nd Amendment.

A Democrat who is probably smiling inside over Kamala’s defeat is the man who involuntarily ended his political career as president to launch hers as the party’s presidential candidate. It must be somewhat satisfying for Biden to know, despite the pressure put on him by Obama to withdraw, Harris failed to outperform Biden in any single county in the country. It suggests Obama’s wisdom in promoting Harris as the party’s standard bearer took a backseat to the opportunity he envisioned a Kamala presidency would provide him.

With Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, Trump chose a most qualified running mate. He will bring to the office leadership skills Harris proved totally incapable in developing. As such, when Trump steps down in 2028, Vance will undoubtedly become the party’s standard-bearer, possibly securing for Republicans a repeat of the 12-year Reagan/Bush presidential reign.

When Trump leaves office in 2028, Obama will be 67. Will Obama rise like the phoenix out of the ashes of a landslide loss by Democrats to Trump, once again reviving his shadow presidency, or has Kamala’s defeat finally finished his political career?

Hopefully by then, recognizing Obama’s foolish promotion of Harris as Biden’s running mate in 2020, along with his foolish decision to effect a coup to give her the presidential nomination followed by his even more foolish decision to press for Walz’s selection as her running mate, Democrats will see the Wizard for what he really is – a politician blinded by the lust of maintaining influence regardless of the cost to either his party or his country!