This week promises to be rough for the President, with the Supreme Court likely to declare the key part of his signature domestic legislation unconstitutional. Congress may vote to hold his attorney general in contempt for withholding documents relating to the cover-up of the Fast and Furious tragedy where U.S. weapons were used by Mexican drug cartels to kill a border patrol agent.

The similarities to Watergate are striking, yet Obama may survive, because the majority of the news media will support his contention that “all documents relating to the original operation have been released.” People forget that it was not the original burglary that brought down the Nixon administration but the cover-up.

Whatever the outcome of this week’s events, as important as they are, there are additional reasons President Obama should be retired.

The Main Reason – Disdain for the Constitution

Whatever political views you have, we are a nation of laws, not of men. From the tactics used to pass Obamacare to his intimidation of the Supreme Court for doing their job, Obama has shown the least regard for our written Constitution of any President.

He is likable, friendly and personable, charismatic, a persuasive and formidable campaigner. His supporters would say he’s just doing what he can, and some complain he hasn’t done enough. But he is not content with his constitutional role as President, and acts like a king instead.

Everything is carefully planned for his reelection advantage, including his latest executive order directing the Justice Department to not enforce current U.S. immigration law. This is obviously designed to buy votes from Hispanics. He couldn’t change the law by the normal process when he had majorities in both houses, so he chooses to play an unconstitutional trump card that will make Republicans look bad if they object.

Even if you sympathize with the objectives of the actions, the disregard for due process is troubling, whether it’s Obamacare or assaults on religious liberty that he knows will eventually be struck down.

It’s the Economy, Stupid

President Obama’s economic policies are much like President Franklin Roosevelt. America had panics and depressions in 1832, 1837-43, 1869-71, and panics in 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893, and 1901. The Great Depression was only memorable because it lasted so long and caused so much pain. Since then we have had recessions every ten or twenty years.

Most economists agree that deficit spending prolonged the Great Depression; it took World War II to get us out. Obama and the Democratic Congress are repeating Roosevelt’s Big Government mistakes and prolonging the Great Recession, with the real unemployment rate hovering in the mid-teens. We need to learn from past mistakes, not repeat them.

Keynesian economics and socialism are not the best economic systems. American history is littered with examples of failed socialist experiments, from the virtuous Pilgrims to the progressives in Woodrow Wilson’s day to the 1960s Great Society where government tried to replace individual virtue.

Modern European socialism is gentler than communism. Compare the economies of 1980s East and West Germany and current North and South Korea, which had the same hard-working people but different economic systems.

Democratic socialism creates cradle-to-grave welfare states and disincentives for productive work. The entitlement mentality and debt burden in some countries can finally breed civil unrest, as in Greece recently. America should not want to follow their path.

Weak Foreign Policy

The President has appeased our adversaries and insulted our allies. He is systematically weakening our military; America is not safer than it was four years ago, despite the killing of Osama bin Laden. High value terrorists are no longer interrogated with the enhanced techniques that led to bin Laden’s well-deserved end. Somehow killing them rather than capturing them to gain information is considered more humane.

The recent election of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt does not bode well for Coptic Christians and other religious minorities there. The Arab Spring has turned into a chilly winter for non-Islamists, who are perhaps 10-20% of the world’s Muslims but rule by fear for Muslims and non-Muslims alike wherever they gain power.

The world is becoming more dangerous with Iran on the brink of acquiring nuclear weapons. America needs a President who not only understands the danger of a terrorist-sponsoring country like Iran getting weapons capable of following through on its leader’s threat to obliterate Israel, but who has the backbone to back the lone democracy in the region instead of telling Israel’s leaders to play nice with a neighbor bent on its destruction.

War on the Private Sector

The only sector that hasn’t suffered economically under President Obama’s leadership is the public sector. That would be fine except we can’t all work for the government.

Someone has to pay taxes to fund all the new IRS agents to enforce Obamacare mandates and pay the salaries of bureaucrats who are writing the tens of thousands of pages of rules to go with the 2000+ page Affordable Health Care Act. The Washington, DC area is doing far better than most cities in the rest of America.

With >14% unemployment, the construction sector is hurting worse than others. One caller to a talk show reported that construction jobs in his area evaporated after the stimulus bill was passed, not just slowed down or increased as intended.

Energy Policy Puts Unproven Theories before People

There is general agreement that the earth is warming in the last few decades. Not everyone agrees that people have caused it or even if we have, that governments should drastically reduce carbon emissions and future economic growth to combat it.

The earth has been through cycles before: the medieval warm period when many of the European cathedrals were built and later the Little Ice Age in the 1600s. Several years ago the media was warning us of global cooling. The current increase in temperatures may be caused more by increased sunspot activity than by the increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Obama and his allies may be happy with European fuel prices, unemployment and economic growth but Americans should not be. The proponents of green energy ignore the high cost of solar and wind energy, and still don’t want nuclear energy. Even if we covered the landscape with solar panels and windmills (which kill birds), it’s still a drop in the bucket of America’s energy needs.

Clean coal, natural gas, Canadian oil shale, Alaskan and offshore oil are all abundant alternatives; we have plenty in North America but environmentalists stand in the way of developing all five. They would rather ship manufacturing jobs offshore through high energy prices rather than develop our own natural resources.

Divider in Chief

President Obama had a great opportunity as the first African-American president to unify our country. Unfortunately, his party stays in power by dividing people by race, gender, economic status, and a myriad of other factors; he has squandered that opportunity. America is more fractured than it was when he took office and the blame can be laid squarely at his feet, not his predecessor or his opponents in Congress.

Obama has played on people’s natural envy of others by inciting the war between the haves and the have-nots. Rather than encouraging everyone to do their best, he pits one group against another.

Less important than whether someone can feel your pain is whether his policies will do the right things to help. President Obama says all the right words, but his actions do exactly the opposite. You have to watch what he does, not what he says.

Conclusion

Any of the four Republicans would have been a huge improvement over the President. Future columns will give reasons to hire President Romney and why Marco Rubio would be a good running mate. Rubio is a solid conservative from a must-win state and will balance the ticket for Romney.

President Obama should be retired so he can devote full time to what he does best – give speeches and write books. He will do well on the talk show circuit promoting his memoirs, contributing to our private sector economy instead of draining the taxpayer coffers with his endless travel, campaigning on our dime.