From Politico's Arena. This is why we are finally hearing media criticism of The One. The LEFT is growing disillusioned with him, and they give the MSM permission to report that all is not well in Obamaland. E.g. on the SNL skit:
Drew Westen, Psychologist and neuroscientist:
The skit itself probably isn’t damaging, anymore than I suspect the Tina Fey skit was all that damaging. What’s damaging is that it’s capturing a perception that has substantial reality. It speaks to Obama’s ability to deliver a stunning speech and then to disappear, only to deliver another stunning speech on something else that he apparently doesn’t really mean; his penchant for half-solutions when he could have whole solutions; and the difference between what a real leader looks like in times like this and what someone who, for whatever reasons, has chosen to duck for cover every time a hard decision has to be made that would involve criticizing anybody or changing the paradigm.
People speak of Roosevelt’s first 100 days for a reason. What will they speak about for Obama? His first 100 compromises that didn’t need to be made? The SNL piece is so funny because it speaks to the difference between the President’s promises and rhetoric on the one hand and his actions on the other, and like most good humor, it speaks a inconvenient truth. Reduce...
The President may well get himself a second term. But as someone who thought he was the real thing, I’m among the millions who are actually growing indifferent, and if he’s losing someone like me, that’s change he should believe in. Whether he gets a second term or whether it’s Mitt Romney frankly doesn’t work me up all that much anymore. Unless he decides that he wants to be remembered as something other than the first black president, he’s not going to be remembered as a transformative president at a time in which any other Democrat in his position would have had virtually no alternative but to be one. He’s simply too conflict-avoidant to transform anything. He’ll get some version of health reform passed, most of which he could have made through executive orders without all the hubbub (e.g., regulating industry practices regarding spending caps, pre-existing conditions, etc.). He’ll get the 80% where even the far right agrees because their constituents need those changes and can’t afford to put ideology ahead of their last chance at making their mortgage payments. Or he may end up actually doing tremendous damage with that reform, e.g., by incentivizing insurance companies to eliminate “gold-plated” plans—that is, the plans most middle class people are willing to tighten their belts to pay for rather than taking the bureaucratic HMO plans that take away their choices. Ironically, it’s on foreign policy where the “inexperienced” Obama may transform America’s image after George Bush destroyed it, although again, virtually any Democrat would have done the same, if not as eloquently. But the test for that will be Copenhagen, when the U.S. will either take leadership again on our deteriorating atmosphere or abdicates because Obama just can’t stare down energy industry executives and tell them that his—and their—children’s future means more than their profits and that they can shove their clean coal up their clean assess. But if the last 8 months are any indication, I’d expect a lovely speech and a great leap forward for the Dow—led by energy stocks. |
