Liberal Ruth Marcus, WaPo:
For a man who won office talking about change we can believe in, Barack Obama can be a strangely passive president. There are a startling number of occasions in which the president has been missing in action – unwilling, reluctant or late to weigh in on the issue of the moment. He is, too often, more reactive than inspirational, more cautious than forceful.
Each of these instances can be explained on its own terms, as matters of legislative strategy, geopolitical calculation or political prudence.
He didn’t want to get mired in legislative details during the health-care debate for fear of repeating the Clinton administration’s prescriptive, take-ours-or-leave-it approach. He doesn’t want to go first on proposing entitlement reform because history teaches that this is not the best route to a deal. He didn’t want to say anything too tough about Libya for fear of endangering Americans trapped there. He didn’t want to weigh in on the labor battle in Wisconsin because, well, it’s a swing state.
Yet the dots connect to form an unsettling portrait of a “Where’s Waldo?” presidency: You frequently have to squint to find the White House amid the larger landscape.
Well, Ruth, the problem isn’t that you can’t find the guy: too often, he’s burrowing his snout where it clearly doesn’t belong, be it in the affairs of Arizona or Wisconsin, or in our food and energy choices.
No, the problem is that when it comes time to lead, rather than merely to sniff out his next chance to engage in crass political opportunism, he’s either indifferent or feckless: unless he can see the personal benefit in engaging, he’d rather just throw himself a party, or watch ESPN, thank you very much.
He’s a community organizer in a big white house. A hustler in finely creased slacks and a tax-payer funded pimp ride. Honestly. What did you expect?
We better take both houses in 2012 and hopefully beat him. Because this is not going to turn out well.
I wish him years of eating low-fat whole-grain locally-sourced waffles with his lovely wife, unperturbed by nosy journalists. Beginning as soon as is humanly possible.
There’s nothing strange about his passivity. His owners and handlers have taught him for decades that if he just sits there and reads their script, they will take care of him. If there IS no script, it’s unreasonable to expect him to write one.
Gee, we should be so surprised.
He was a state senator for how long?
Long enough to expose that remarkable Obama ego, LBascom. It oozes and it enthralls.
My mom, the epitome of a middle of the road voter, knew President Obama was an empty suit from day one.
2 years into the Obama presidency and the liberal media still misses the point: Obama has nothing on his resume to indicated, in any way, the ability to govern. And the Obama resume still shows absolutely no ability to govern.
I suppose it’s a step in the right direction that 2 years into the Obama presidency, liberal writers are at least puzzled about President Obama.
2×4 mules learn quicker than liberals.
Come on Mr. Howard, can’t a guy just eat his
wafflescorn cakes in peace?Every time one of these numbskulls comes out with a “Where did Teh Won go wrong?” lamentation, we need to put them on the list of “public intellectuals” who get nothing but mockery from now unto the end of days.
“We should all take trains? Honey, that’s the stupidest thing you’ve written since you endorsed Obama!”
As long as people don’t know how to spot a malignant narcissist–and to avoid putting them in office–we’ll just have more of the same.
In other words: thus has it ever been, and thus will ever it be.
Di,
I see your “thus it has been, and thus will it ever be” and raise you a
“What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.”
Eccl. 1:9 NIV
When he didn’t ditch college to become a shoe salesman.
Interestingly (or not, YMMV) Waldo also means “a remotely-operated manipulator”…
The ‘malaise speech’ was the Carter tipping point . . . has the country reached that point, yet?
Blake,
DSN,
“When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins…”
A rather apt description of our times.
McGehee,
Spot on.