"Obama is still suffering from the Speech Illusion, the idea that he can come down from the mountain, read from a Teleprompter, cast a magic spell with his words and climb back up the mountain, while we scurry around and do what he proclaimed.
. . . .
The White House team is flailing — reacting, regrouping, retrenching. It’s repugnant.
After pushing and shoving and caving to get on TV, the president’s advisers immediately began warning that the long-yearned-for jobs speech wasn’t going to be that awe-inspiring.
'The issue isn’t the size or the newness of the ideas,' one said. 'It’s less the substance than how he says it, whether he seizes the moment.'
The arc of justice is stuck at the top of a mountain. Maybe Obama was not even the person he was waiting for."
Dowd has seized upon an important point: Obama didn't buckle to Boehner out of diffidence and reschedule his speech. Rather, the speech was political, and there was nothing within its text that could alter the downward trajectory of the US economy. Moreover, Obama's seasoned political advisors realized that an anguished American electorate is seeking answers to unemployment, not canned inspiration read from teleprompters, which could only lead to a further decline in his Gallup presidential approval rating.
On the other hand, Obama's faintheartedness is indeed the hallmark of his presidency, and it is peculiar that this character flaw is only now being discovered by those who once adulated him. His diffidence was on display across the world stage long before House Republicans made a mockery of the man.
Recall the bow to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
Of greater significance, remember Obama's outreach program to the world's vilest tyrannies, including Iran, Syria and Burma.
It has taken Obama months to call upon Assad to step down, and notwithstanding the thousands butchered by Syria's leader, Obama refuses to bring Ambassador Ford home from Damascus.
Far more frightening was Obama's willingness to tolerate Iran's thinly disguised nuclear weapons program. How many times has Obama drawn a line in the sand, only to watch the Iranians ignore his toothless warnings? Today, Iran is burrowing into the mountains astride the "holy" city of Qom in order to protect its centrifuges from aerial assault. The centrifuges are producing quantities of enriched uranium far in excess of any justifiable medical research requirement, yet Obama remains silent.
Obama's timidity has created a power vacuum in the Middle East, avidly being explored by both Iran and Turkey, which could ultimately lead to a disruption of the world economy far greater than the financial tumult experienced in 2008.
It will not be long before Iran's longstanding rival, Saudi Arabia, whose leadership was appalled by the manner in which Obama discarded Egypt's Mubarek, unveils its own atomic weapons initiative.
"Maybe Obama was not even the person he was waiting for"? Sorry, Maureen, but not much chance of that. This narcissistic procrastinator-in-chief is incapable of seeing, no less remedying, his own character flaws.
fine and fair comment, Jeff.
ReplyDeleteThe loony lefties of the NY Times are waking up too late.
And once again it proves that a journalist never has to take responsibility for his or her writing.
They can simply beat their own breast with an occasional "Je m'accuse!" - although generally speaking in their own minds they are never wrong. It is the politicians who let them down.