David Brooks, "The Fighter Fallacy": Gaining the Trust of Voters

David Brooks latest New York Times op-ed, "The Fighter Fallacy" (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/25/opinion/brooks-the-fighter-fallacy.html?_r=1&ref=opinion), is about falling trust in the federal government, which, under Obama, has reached a new nadir:

"Now, amid the economic slowdown, public trust has hit an all-time low. According to a CNN/ORC International poll, only 15 percent of Americans asked said that they trust the federal government to do the right thing most of the time."

Observing that Obama is now speciously seeking to present himself as a "fighter" as opposed to a "conciliator," Brooks concludes his opinion piece by writing:

"If you don’t trust voters to be serious, they won’t trust you."

But when did Obama ever trust voters? Not in 2008. As explained by one of his most senior advisers, Anita ("two of my favorite political philosophers, Mao Tse-Tung and Mother Teresa") Dunn (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlGNhAnwp_Y):

"One of the reasons we did so many of the David Plouffe [Obama’s chief campaign manager] videos was not just for our supporters, but also because it was a way for us to get our message out without having to actually talk to reporters. We just put that out there and made them write what Plouffe had said as opposed to Plouffe doing an interview with a reporter. So it was very much we controlled it as opposed to the press controlled it. . . . very rarely did we communicate through the press anything that we didn’t absolutely control."

. . . .

"There is no such thing as off the record . . . . Obama himself learned that when he told a fund raising group in San Francisco . . . about people who owned guns in small communities that ended up of course costing us a lot of votes in rural Pennsylvania. . . . Anything you say you should expect to be on You Tube."

Obama and his advisers never trusted the electorate with his true views on anything. It was all about "control." It was all about being elected. It was all a shimmering mirage.

Obama now seeks to pose as a "fighter"? A little late in the game. The harsh realities of governing, which cannot be disguised, have presented him as a man who cogitates, deliberates, cerebrates and avoid decisions, e.g. the mistaken determination to escalate American involvement in Afghanistan which took many months to reach.

America's Procrastinator-in-Chief is no "fighter," and no one -- no matter how hard Axelrod and Plouffe may try in 2012 -- is going to buy it.