With the year and season turning; perhaps also the decade and undoubtably the aging of the millenium that seemed so young moments ago, Americans high and low, both bailed and swamped are reflecting on their lives, their faith, the state of the world and the state of their relationships. Many find themselves feeling trapped in arrangements they made joyously and optimistically; wedded in haste and in public, they now regret at length and in the dark privacy of their hearts. Not exempted from this is the enthusiastic practitioner of plural, whimsical marriages, our fine and debonair President, Barack Obama.

Of course this is not gay marriage or opposite marriage or multiple marriages to goat, camel or shrew. If there is a shrew in the mix there is at least only the one. Rather our man suffers from something worse and apparently more inseverable; we examine now the array of practices and pronouncements unworthy of the title “policy” that Mr Obama married so profligately over the course of his brief career.

Perhaps the most obvious policy spouse now a-dragging the Obama ship of state is the one we all saw him vow fidelity to on national television in a flash. The bellicose and arrogant Hillary among other (Democrat only) hopefuls declared that they would speak diplomatically with the bearded grandees of the Islamic Republic of Iran but only having booked certain concessions, mostly consisting of a public but paper thin commitment to rein in their A-bomb design and production program to some meager and unverifiable extent. The able Jim Lehrer asked the upstart (at that time) Obama whether he would commit, here and now, to summit level talks without precondition, without that metaphorical pre-nup? Unhesitatingly answers he… “I would.”

So, so close to “I do”, is it possible he did not realize he was marrying this quip as surely as if he carted her burkha-filling bulk down to the mosque? Perhaps but a Vegas marriage is as binding as any other. He assented, Reverand Lehrer pronounced the deed done but not until lately has Mr Obama had the chance to pull up the veil for that long anticipated kiss. He finds the grinning mug of Ahmadinejad; face-man to the A-Team of medieval mullahs and this hirsute bride is unsatisfied with mere marriage, an equal partnership as we know them here in the West. No, the Iranians wish also to hold the whip hand. What? That is so primitive! Can’t we just treat everyone the same and be all nice and equal? Perhaps but it will not be the Iranians levitating to our level of prominence, prosperity and freedom; it will be us clawed down to the thirteenth century… with mushroom clouds. Barack proposes a post-ceremony reafirmation. If Iran will unclench her fist she will find a helping hand. Oh, the generosity! Her response? “I don’t have a clenched fist. YOU have the clenched fist. And I don’t like the sound of that “helping hand” stuff. Unclench YOUR fist and then maybe we can talk.” So as Mr Obama states so loud and proud that he enters this unholy union without reservations and without preconditions Iran reveals preconditions of her own. But SHE has the ring. Mr Obama must squire her around on her terms, at least for now. Perhaps if he is very, very nice to her, she will reform.

Well, one may hope. But this is not the only troublesome coupling bedeviling the President. Another policy marriage committed without much reflection is that committment to close Guantanamo. Of course he did not marry this one alone, it was a mass-marriage that also included John McCain. This marriage was held to be the most blessed of unions; indeed the shuttering of this hell on the beach was thought to be a moral imperative and the notion that these desert lurkers would be dropped on the tundra in Illinois put in at least a bit of sweetener for the pro–torture crowd but nasty realities intrude. Barack inherited Guantanamo, dontcha know. And if that dork Bush was married to THAT one then we had better dump her for Illinois poste haste. But it seems that Bush chose with more than a passing fancy in his eye. Bush married Guantanamo for reasons of law and practicality. No, it was not and is not a hunting preserve where Dick Cheney rides down goatherds in a Humvee for sport. The Bushies arranged this marriage because Guantanamo was, for explicit purposes, a real prize. Guantanamo can genuinely claim what you wish your spouse could; Guantanamo is utterly unique, one in a million in that it is a patch of earth under the control of the US that is not subject to the jurisdiction of a federal court. Not even a ship at sea can claim that. This is why Haitian and Cuban refugees were also held here in years past. It is a legal limbo for the hardest of the hard cases; it is a fortress not against warfare but the lawfare the jihadis practice with as much zeal as their more explosive habits. But this was of no concern to Barack Obama. So certain is he that Bush and Depravity are synonyms that his staff must keep from him the fact that W practices respiration. Close Guantanamo! Open Thomson! These are sacred vows (with convenient payouts). Costs be damned. And if the graduates of Guantanamo re-offend (as they do) we will just do it all again; lather, rinse, repeat. And repeat. ’til death…

But he’s married to it. You know how that is. And it is a crowded, plural policy marriage. Another mass policy marriage that has come a-cropper is to Global Warming, or rather to its resolution that goes by many names but amounts to a War Against Fire. This was a mass-marriage even more massive than the anti-Gitmo one. Barack also married healthcare though those who thought he had married universal, single-payer or even gub-option found this was an open marriage. Was the marriage to TARP/bailouts/stimuli a shotgun wedding? He has implied that and it would be nice to think so but all these vows have in the meantime been renewed in even more lavish ceremonies. He has recently remarried himself to the daughter of stimuli, astronomic public debt, though he talks her down perpetually. He has a long, turbulent marriage to ACORN and will not abandon her as she was his first true love. He has a common law marriage to the radical commies of yesteryear like Bill Ayers. He married liberation theology in a ceremony officiated by the eloquent Reverend Wright and worked hard at that marriage for twenty years… until lately. Indeed, if there were sex involved (and I hope there ain’t) the serial, concurrent monogamy demonstrated here would task the varsity freak-wranglers of Jerry Springer’s peak season but since these are policy marriages they are immune to such considerations, even when the policies contradict one another. When it comes to policy marriage, Barack has a boistrous harem, all inveigling to be Number One, or at least to move up a peg. But he seems unable to choose definitively those partners who are good for him (and us) and those that are not. Whichever concubine can squirm her way into the driver’s seat for the moment turns the wheel. In other words, events and hasty, ill-considered  promises are calling the shots, not the guy on the trillion dollar bill. If you have felt some rough road lately this is why. And get used to it because if policy marriage is easy and cheap policy divorce most emphatically is not.

Oh, and gay marriage? Check the transcripts, he never was that into you.

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