Maureen Dowd, who believes Obama is kind of a last-minute guy and "eternally the gifted and sometimes indolent student," is pessimistic about his reelection. I'd just like to add to the conversation that he may not want a second term. Maybe that's why he looked a little like a puppet "playing hard ball" during his speech to the joint session and maybe that's why his wife looked like molten thunder. Michelle Obama is almost certainly the more professionally ambitious of the two. The president?
...The odd rhythms of his temperament are less interesting when so much is at stake. Bill Clinton drifted for a time during his presidency, also needing the guillotine to focus his mind. But at least he was drifting on an ocean of peace and prosperity. Disengaging when the United States and the world are going to hell is playing with fire.
We never knew which Clinton would show up: Saturday Night Bill, as Dick Morris called the man of uncurbed appetites, or Sunday Morning Bill, a talented and passionate pol. Now Obama offers his own version of the split-personality presidency: Do we get Energizer Barry or Enervating Barry?
Mind you, we have given him a helluva Washington to try to operate in. If I were Barack Obama having one of those 2 a.m. bad moments, I'd be wondering about the moral strength and conviction of my "liberal base." It's hard to be proud of our efforts on his behalf.
The reawakened Republicans are no longer the loyal opposition. They’re revolutionary Bolsheviks who want to eat Obama alive.
When the president stays insulated with his little circle that doesn’t know how to push his messages, and he lets the nihilist Republicans go unchallenged in their crazy claims to be saving the country they’re hurting, he sets the stage for Rick Perry.
It’s still impossible to sum up what Obama’s presidency is about right now, except saving his own job.
Which he may not want.
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Our egos are at stake. We elected the guy. He's the leader of our team. We're mad at him for letting us down (though we don't like to show it to the opposition).
... A survey of two dozen Democratic officials found a palpable sense of concern that transcended a single week of ups and downs. The conversations signaled a change in mood from only a few months ago, when Democrats widely believed that Mr. Obama’s path to re-election, while challenging, was secure.
“The frustrations are real,” said Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, who was the state chairman of Mr. Obama’s campaign four years ago. “I think we know that there is a Barack Obama that’s deep in there, but he’s got to synchronize it with passion and principles.” ... NYT
Seems to me we have some good legislators and a very bright president, but do the Democrats have a good party structure? Isn't that a big part of the problem for us, for Obama, for the country? No clear and progressive party structure? When you hear the phrase "Democratic party leadership" do you picture a scattering of pale confetti on a map of the 50 states?
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In the light of the tenth anniversary of 9/11, it's interesting to find out that Obama has succeeded mightily in the area of national security.
National security has gone from being Obama’s big political weakness to his only area of policy strength.
Now potential Republican presidential nominees who eviscerate him on the economy offer grudging credit on terrorism. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, for example, said in last week’s GOP debate that Obama “maintained the chase” to find Osama bin Laden. “I tip my hat to him,” Perry said.
And even the stern-faced Cheney throws out a compliment now and then.
“Guantanamo is still open, they still have military commissions for trying terrorism suspects,” he said recently on Fox News. “And I think you’ve got to give him credit for the operation to get Osama bin Laden.”
The challenge for Obama is to figure out whether his record on security might help reassure voters who are turning their backs on him because of doubts about his ability to fix the economy.
So far, that hasn’t happened. Instead, the president who bagged the world’s most-wanted man is perceived as a weakling who was rolled by Republicans in the debt-ceiling debate and whose hopes for a prime-time address to Congress were foiled by GOP opposition and then the start time of a football game. ...WaPo
What the Post doesn't seem to reckon with is the damage Guantanamo has done to the nation and that damage also stands between Obama and many in his party. But if you're talking reelection, there's no question but that Obama has national security nailed down. Too bad the main issue is employment.
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In an editorial in the Post this morning, David Ignatius points to the irony "that this liberal Democrat, known before the 2008 election for his antiwar views, has been so comfortable running America’s secret wars." This is a president many of his supporters don't recognize and don't know how to respond to.
What has become of the “change we can believe in” style he showed as a candidate? The answer may be that he has disappeared into the secret world of the post-Sept. 11 presidency.
Obama has devoured intelligence from the day he took office: He stepped up the pace of Predator drone attacks over Pakistan starting in 2009. He approved the bold raid on Abbottabad that killed Osama bin Laden on May 2. Before major speeches, such as the famous Cairo address in April 2009, he has even sought advice from intelligence analysts.
The president played the spymaster role last week, after a “credible threat” surfaced of an al-Qaeda car-bomb plot against New York and Washington. He tasked the intelligence agencies to pulse all their sources, and decided on a quick, broad release of the information to law enforcement agencies around the country, so they could join in the dragnet....This is a president, too, who prizes his authority to conduct covert action.
And a key to dissatisfaction on the left:
On this anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, America is lucky to have a president who is adept at intelligence. But it needs, as well, a leader who can take the country out of the shadows and into the light.
