Dowd on Obama

I always enjoy Maureen Dowd. She usually has a good analysis but then spices it up with verbal fireworks to make it doubly delicious. Here's Dowd's NY Times op-ed with her take on Obama's deflating "leadership"...

Like Reagan, Obama is a detached loner with a strong, savvy wife. But unlike Reagan, he doesn’t have the acting skills to project concern about what’s happening to people.

Obama showed a flair for the theatrical during his campaign, and a talent for narrative in his memoir, but he has yet to translate those skills to governing.

As with the debates, he seems resistant to the idea that perception, as well as substance, matters. Obama so values pragmatism, and is so immersed in the thorny details of legislative compromises, that he may be undervaluing the connective bonds of simpler truths.

Americans who are hurting get angry when they learn that Timothy Geithner, as head of the New York Fed before becoming Treasury secretary, caved to the insistence of Goldman Sachs and other A.I.G. trading partners that they get 100 cents on the dollar when he could have struck a far better bargain for taxpayers.

If we could see a Reduced Shakespeare summary of Obama’s presidency so far, it would read:

Dither, dither, speech. Foreign trip, bow, reassure. Seminar, summit. Shoot a jump shot with the guys, throw out the first pitch in mom jeans. Compromise, concede, close the deal. Dither, dither, water down, news conference.

It’s time for the president to reinvent this formula and convey a more three-dimensional person.

Palin can be stupefyingly simplistic, but she seems dynamic. Obama is impressively complex but he seems static.

The American people deserve something better. Obama should resign, Biden step aside, Nancy Pelosi give up he Speaker of the House, and thereby force another election where somebody willing to act and lead and save the nation steps forward. (On second thought, that might not work. Too many voters have been lobotimized and will pull the levers to support gasbags and right wing extremists.) I guess all I can do is what the mess simmer and stew. What a tragedy.