Bill O'Reilly: Civil war in Washington
January 28, 2014

By Bill O'Reilly

Tomorrow night the President will give his fifth State of the Union address. And "Talking Points" predicts many Americans will not pay attention. That's because the USA is stuck. Little is getting done in D.C. and the folks are getting sick and tired of the logjam.

Mr. Obama has promised that if Congress does not cooperate more with him, that he'll sign a bunch of executive orders getting stuff done by fiat. Well that's not going to make many people happy. At this point in his presidency, President Clinton has signed 238 executive orders; President Bush the younger, 198; and President Obama 167.

So you can see that Barack Obama hasn't been crazy with the executive order business. But that was then. Now the President's under siege. All the polls show his job approval rating low and his credibility has been damaged.

A new poll by the Associated Press has Americans who tried signing up for health insurance on the Obamacare Web site, what they thought of the experience. Just eight percent said the Web site works well; 29 percent said somewhat well, 53 percent no well at all. That eight percent number is a disaster. After all the money spent to roll out Obamacare, eight percent?

So tomorrow night the President has a very difficult task trying to convince Americans that his administration will solve vexing problems going forward. One of the big concerns with the President's tenure so far has been his inability to persuade Congress to give him a break.

Mr. Obama should remember Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" movie. That film is essentially about what President Lincoln had to do to convince a Congress suspicious of him to pass anti-slavery legislation. Lincoln did all kinds of things, some of which boarded on illegal to get the slavery deal done.

Even if Barack Obama uses executive orders his presidency will not be successful until he reaches some kind of detente with Congress and that is an exceedingly difficult task because Republicans smell blood in the water and are in no mood to expand the federal government the way the President wants.

Just today there's an article in the "New York Times" that says the Republican Party may well win the senate next November. So, alert Americans know that Barack Obama is not in a good place. His job tomorrow night: to begin to turn it all around.

And that's "The Memo."

- You can catch Bill O'Reilly's "Talking Points Memo" weeknights at 8 and 11 p.m. ET on the Fox News Channel and any time on foxnews.com/oreilly. Send your comments to: oreilly@foxnews.com.

Transcript Date: 
Mon, 01/27/2014
Transcript Show Name: 
O'Reilly Factor
Posted by BillOReilly.com Staff at 11:23 AM
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