Truth be Told

Here's Paul Krugman sizing up Obama for the perverse disappointment that he truly, truly is:

After the Democratic “shellacking” in the midterm elections, everyone wondered how President Obama would respond. Would he show what he was made of? Would he stand firm for the values he believes in, even in the face of political adversity?

On Monday, we got the answer: he announced a pay freeze for federal workers. This was an announcement that had it all. It was transparently cynical; it was trivial in scale, but misguided in direction; and by making the announcement, Mr. Obama effectively conceded the policy argument to the very people who are seeking — successfully, it seems — to destroy him.

So I guess we are, in fact, seeing what Mr. Obama is made of.

...

Meanwhile, there’s a real deficit issue on the table: whether tax cuts for the wealthy will, as Republicans demand, be extended. Just as a reminder, over the next 75 years the cost of making those tax cuts permanent would be roughly equal to the entire expected financial shortfall of Social Security. ...

But he didn’t. Instead, he apparently intended the pay freeze announcement as a peace gesture to Republicans the day before a bipartisan summit. At that meeting, Mr. Obama, who has faced two years of complete scorched-earth opposition, declared that he had failed to reach out sufficiently to his implacable enemies. He did not, as far as anyone knows, wear a sign on his back saying “Kick me,” although he might as well have.

There were no comparable gestures from the other side. Instead, Senate Republicans declared that none of the rest of the legislation on the table — legislation that includes such things as a strategic arms treaty that’s vital to national security — would be acted on until the tax-cut issue was resolved, presumably on their terms.

It’s hard to escape the impression that Republicans have taken Mr. Obama’s measure — that they’re calling his bluff in the belief that he can be counted on to fold. And it’s also hard to escape the impression that they’re right.

The real question is what Mr. Obama and his inner circle are thinking. Do they really believe, after all this time, that gestures of appeasement to the G.O.P. will elicit a good-faith response?

What’s even more puzzling is the apparent indifference of the Obama team to the effect of such gestures on their supporters. One would have expected a candidate who rode the enthusiasm of activists to an upset victory in the Democratic primary to realize that this enthusiasm was an important asset. Instead, however, Mr. Obama almost seems as if he’s trying, systematically, to disappoint his once-fervent supporters, to convince the people who put him where he is that they made an embarrassing mistake.

Whatever is going on inside the White House, from the outside it looks like moral collapse — a complete failure of purpose and loss of direction.

The bottom line is that Obama is not a leader. He is part of the problem. He is a mind-numbingly idiotic fool who keeps giving the Republicans everything they want and wonders why he isn't "loved" by the Republicans. In return, they keep asking why Americans elected a Kenyan socialist who claimed to be "the one" to the highest office in the land. I think most Democrats wish dearly they had voted for a Kenyan socialist willing to step up to the bar and "be the one". Instead they got a schmuck who is to politics as Paris Hilton is to Mother Teresa.

From Robert Reich's blog, here is an excellent example of how Obama fails as a leader: he doesn't communicate policy, he lets the opponents define him to his detriment:

The President should propose that the Bush tax cuts be extended for EVERYONE — but only on their first $250,000 of income.

Hey, wait a minute. That’s exactly what he is proposing. EVERYONE gets a continuation of the Bush tax cuts on the first $250,000 of their incomes. If your income is $251,000, you’ll get the Bush tax cut on $250,000 of it. Only $1,000 would be taxed at the higher Clinton rate.

So why have Republicans been able to say Obama and the Democrats don’t want to extend the Bush tax cuts to everyone?

Call it another White House and Democratic communications failure.

Not only is Obama a hopeless "negotiator" (here, take what you want, please, I insist) who gives the opposition Republicans what they want before he sits down to "negotiate", he doesn't lead his own troops by having a clear message. Pitiful.