Who's missing from all the written, video, and even musical tributes wishing President Barack Obama a tearful and grateful farewell?
This is not a trick question. The answer is: Just about every prominent Republican and conservative in America. They're not playing the Obama appreciation game. And it's more than understandable why, considering his liberal policies.
But allow this conservative to send one gracious message to the outgoing president for doing one thing the Right should be truly grateful for. And it's also something President-elect Donald Trump should note and emulate. We should all be grateful that Barack Obama was a good cheerleader for the American economy.
Now before you shrug your shoulders and say that it's not big deal for any sitting president to talk up the economy, just consider the following two names: Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Those two Senators not only represent the real future and political strength of the Democratic Party, but they got there by attacking American corporations and entire industries one after the other. And far from paying a price for doing so, they've reaped political rewards not many could have predicted.
Sanders rode his "bash the 1 percent" messaging all the way to a shockingly close Democratic presidential primary battle with Hillary Clinton. And Warren has quickly become possibly the most popular leader of the progressive Democratic Party movement even though she hasn't even completed one full term in office and has been in Washington at the same time an extremely popular Democrat just happened to be in the White House.
By contrast, President Obama kept his browbeating and shaming of American corporations and even the wealthy to a minimum. There are notable exceptions, especially during his first year or two in office when he called CEOs who fly on private jets "fat cats" and decried business that held conventions in Las Vegas. Plus, he was certainly no friend to the coal or beef industries, just to name a few. But while some of his fellow Democrats made bashing corporate America publicly a regular practice for the last eight years, President Obama was careful to project a different image most of the time.