Can the Dude Abide?
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: October 30, 2010
Barack Obama became president by brilliantly telling his own story. To stay president, he will need to show he can understand our story. At first it was exciting that Obama was the sort of brainy, cultivated Democrat who would be at home in a “West Wing” episode. But now he acts like he really thinks he’s on “West Wing,” gliding through an imaginary, amber-lit set where his righteous self-regard is bound to be rewarded by the end of the hour.
Hey, dude, you’re a politician. Act like one. As the head of the Democratic Party, the president should have supported the Democratic candidate for governor in Rhode Island, the one the Democratic Governors Association had already lavished more than $1 million in TV ads on.
If Obama was going to refuse to endorse Frank Caprio out of respect for Lincoln Chafee, the former Republican who endorsed him for president and is now running as an independent, the president should have at least stayed out of Providence.(*)Reductio ad absurdum:
After two years of taking his base for granted, the former Pied Piper of America’s youth had to spar with Jon Stewart to try to get the attention of young people who once idolized him.
- SNIP -
Because Obama stayed above it all on health care and delegated to Max Baucus, he missed the moment in August of 2009 when Sarah Palin and the Tea Party got oxygen with their loopy rants on death panels. It never occurred to the Icon that such wildness and gullibility would trump lofty rationality. As the president tries to ride the Tea Party tiger, let’s hope for this change: that he puts some audacity in his audacity.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/opinion/31dowd.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rssObligatory stipulation:
1. yes, it's Dowd, we know;
2. so in support of saving bandwidth, let me get this out of the way on behalf of those so inclinced: "Maureen Dowd. I stopped reading right there."
The rest of the piece is brilliant, pointed, and a virtual blueprint of why we stand on the eve of one of the most catastrophic - when viewed from the perspective of the morning of January 21, 2009 and the overwhelming potential placed into the hands of our "progressive" President - legislative defeats in the modern era.
(*) >Precisely my argument in an earlier thread on this matter.