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if this was Bush he'd have been crucified 100X over by now.
Obama is just now starting to feel the heat.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/op...ml?ref=opinion
It’s not a good narrative arc: The man who walked on water is now ensnared by a crisis under water.
One little hole a mile down on the ocean floor, so deep it seems like spewing up its sulfurous smoke, has turned the thrilling saga of “The One” into the gurgling horror of “The Abyss.” (Thank goodness James Cameron, the director of “The Abyss,” came to Washington Tuesday to help the administration figure out how to cap the BP well. What’s next? Sending down the Transformers and Megan Fox?)
With as much as 34 million gallons of oil inking the Gulf of Mexico, “Yes we can” has been downgraded to “Will we ever?”
It’s impossible not to feel sorry for President Obama, pummeled by the cascading disasters, at home and abroad, unleashed by two war-mongering oil men
— plus scary escalations by Israel, Iran and North Korea. ( Cheney’s dark influence is still belching like the well.
Obama wanted to be a transformative president and now the presidency is transforming him.
Instead of buoyant, he seems put upon. Instead of the fairy dust of hopefulness, there’s the bitter draught of helplessness.
His battle against water is taking on Biblical — even Job-like — proportions.
Besides the roiling water below, the skies opened from above and gusting, lightning-streaked rains drowned the president’s plans to give a Memorial Day speech at the Lincoln cemetery near Chicago. On the evening news, pictures of the president standing under an umbrella shooing people off the soggy field were a sad contrast to the wildly sentimental Joe Biden presiding, hand on heart, over a sunny and moving Memorial Day commemoration at Arlington National Cemetery.
After suffering more indignities — a S.U.V. in his motorcade blew a tire on I-55 outside of Chicago — a tired-looking Obama returned to Andrews Air Force Base at 7:30 Monday night and went to an area called the “tactical fitness center” to give his remarks to 150 or so subdued service members who had been rounded up by the White House advance team.
As The Washington Post’s Anne Kornblut wryly wrote in her pool report: “It has been years since President Obama attended a rally like the one that took place here Monday night: sparsely attended, thrown together at the last minute, involving people who were not expecting to be there. We’re partying like it’s Obama circa 2005.”
The oil won’t stop flowing, but the magic has.
Barack Obama is a guy who is accustomed to having stuff go right for him. He’s gotten a lot of breaks: two opponents in his U.S. Senate race in Illinois felled by personal scandals; a mismanaged presidential campaign by Hillary Clinton; an economic collapse that set the stage for a historic win, memorably described by the satiric Onion newspaper as “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job.”
Reporters grilled Robert Gibbs at his White House briefing on Tuesday about the president’s strange inability to convey passion over a historical environmental disaster. This was underscored by Obama’s perfunctory drop-by to a sanitized beach in Grand Isle, La. Despite his recent ode about growing up near an ocean, he didn’t bother to meet with the regular folks who have lost their seafaring livelihoods.
After Gibbs asserted that his boss was “enraged” at BP, CBS News’s Chip Reid skeptically pressed: “Have we really seen rage from the president on this? I think most people would say no.”
“I’ve seen rage from him, Chip,” Gibbs insisted. “I have.”
Reid asked for an exact definition of what cons utes emotion for Obama: “Can you describe it? Does he yell and scream? What does he do?”
Gibbs mentioned the words “clenched jaw” and the president’s admonition to “plug the damn hole.”
How does a man who invented himself as a force by writing one of the most eloquent memoirs in political history lose control of his own narrative?
In “Dreams From My Father,” Obama showed passion, lyricism, empathy and an exquisite understanding of character and psychological context (damn, that Bill Ayers is a good writer) — all the qualities that he has stubbornly resisted showing as president. It was a book that promised a president who could see into the hearts of other people. But there’s so much you don’t learn about candidates in campaigns, even when they seem completely exposed.
This president has made it clear that he’s not comfortable outside whatever domain he’s defined. But unless he wants his story to be marred by a pattern of passivity, detachment, acquiescence and compromise, he’d better seize control of the story line of his White House years. Woe-is-me is not an attractive narrative.
if this was Bush he'd have been crucified 100X over by now.
Obama is just now starting to feel the heat.
Darrin, why didn't you credit Maureen Dowd as the author?
I'm not trying to set you up...I'm serious. When I saw that the article was from the NYTimes, I followed your link to see the author, and noted that it was Dowd, who is one of the most left-wing op-ed writers I've ever read. When W. was President, I thought she was downright catty, and I was FURIOUS with Bush. But I still thought she was catty.
You quoted the article at length without commenting on it. Do you agree with Dowd? Do you see her differently than you used to?
What does it say to you that a complete leftist is mad at Obama? Do you take it as proof that he is willing to do things that his "base" hates?...or not do them, as the case may be?
What do you think Obama should do in this situation? Should he involve the government more than it is, or should he continue to rely on private industry to address the technological issues associated with the attempts to stop the oil flow and/or clean up the mess it leaves?
Obviously, the far left, as embodied by Dowd, thinks he should 'take over'.
What do you think?
If you read the article, DarrinS has not so cleverly commented on it with ad hominem remarks and lame ass emoticons.
Granted, but I asked him what he THOUGHT, not what he emotes. I know what he emotes. I'm trying to figure out how he handles the cognitive dissonance he must be experiencing by quoting someone whom he normally would consider a 'lib ' in the extreme.
I mean, he hates Obama. We know that. But he hates Maureen Dowd on most days. ...So how does he square this, and what does he THINK Obama should actually do...follow Dowd's lead, or not?
Actually, I don't hate Obama. I think he's a very intelligent man. I just don't think the guy has had any significant experience as an an executive, and it shows. I also think he tends to mock people who disagree with him and has a tendency for self pity. I hope he's a one-term pres. I'm tired of all these Yale and Harvard grads whos haven't done except be career students in preparation for political life.
dubya's affirmative action into Yale and Harvard prepared him well to be head's puppet.
McLiar's fake hero in VN and his S&L corruption prepared him well to be The Man Who Wouldn't Be President. McLiar would have crashed yet another plane right into the busted well and plugged it first day.
Did you have a significant head injury when you were young?
Did you ever make a decent reply to being -slapped by the Almighty Boutons?
You're like those people that like pro wrestling -- people that would ordinarily like comic books, but can't be bothered with all those annoying word bubbles.
His battle against water is taking on Biblical — even Job-like — proportions.
Hyperbole with a mix of unnecessary Bible references, anyone?
I did not vote for Obama but this oil spill has nothing to do with him. Nor does it have anything to do with Bush or Cheney. The world runs on oil. We drill for oil. We like oil. We just dont' like where it comes from or the people who get it. We just want it to magically appear at our pumps so we can drive to the protest about ....oil.
- signed yours truely, joe public
So do you agree with Dowd, or do you agree with Word? (and me, for that matter).
I will give you this...I think you are right that his inexperience shows...I think we knew it had to...it always has to, with Obama, W., whomever.
But one of the ways I think his inexperience is showing in this instance is his (to me) incomprehensible 'owning' of this debacle. Once he has done that, I think it's pretty damn hard not to hold him responsible for something he absolutely cannot impact. I think his "buck stops here" move was major league idiotic.
I think you're a ing idiot. A moron who joins up with whichever side is yelling the loudest. You know how dumbasses try to call the left out for voting based on 'hope' and 'change' when in actuality, the vast majority of Obama voters were voting for reasons far more nuanced than one word campaign slogans?Actually, I don't hate Obama. I think he's a very intelligent man.
But not you Darrin, your moron ass pulled the lever for Obama precisely because you got caught up in the glib, rockstar, shallow aspects of the Obama campaign, the aspects you now wrongly accuse most liberals of having bought in to. I think you're projecting.
Once Obama won and the teabaggers started shrieking louder than the campaign coverage, you of course, the snivelling little piece of that you are, at the first chance you got jumped ship and started screaming too. So fine, go ahead and tell us how smart, but inexperienced Obama is and we'll all sit back and laugh at you for being a dumbass, waffling, convictionless little that just goes along with whatever flavor of the month catches your eye; the exact type of lowest denominator that politicians abuse and rape over and over and over again. The tiest type of American possible- a buyer of the loudest hyperbole. you.
I agree with this.
I respect this position.
If Obama had Bush's shady Oil history past, it'd be more appropriate.
Perhaps Obama pot smoking days are the reason for his sloooooow reactions and ty decisions.
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