Another Reason Why Obama Must Be Replaced
Dec. 5th, 2010 01:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
redneckgaijinFrank Rich, in an op-ed in today's NYT, stumbles across a key point while trying to paint Obama as a victim of Stockholm Syndrome (held hostage by the GOP):
Rich then goes on to contrast Obama with New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who enjoys higher approval ratings despite the fact that most of his actual stands on issues are disapproved of by New Jersey's voters. Christie, at least, takes a hard, firm, clear and simply expressed stand on what he believes in. Obama, on the other hand, never takes a firm stand on ANYTHING. When he does express views, it's in a quiet, mealy-mouthed way.
When I, and many like me, voted for Obama in 2008 we thought we were getting a fighter, someone who would give the Republicans a chance to meet on equal ground, but tell them where to go if they wouldn't play ball. Instead, what we got was Neville Chamberlain, if not an outright Marshal Petain.
Obama is exercising ANTIleadership. When his party needs a leader, he's absent or silent. When his followers organize on their own and try to push an agenda, he quashes them and calls them "the professional left." In a period when liberals should have been dominant and conservatives repentant, Obama's actions have directly led to the left being silenced and the right being triumphant despite holding none of the levers of power.
At this point I no longer expect gridlock in the next two years. Instead, unless congressional Democrats turn their backs on Obama entirely, I expect two years indistinguishable from a Republican administration. The differences weren't that great before, anyway.
Obama is incapable of leadership- yet another reason why, for the sake of stopping the Republicans and the fascist-conservative-theocratic movement, Obama has to be defeated in 2012.
The cliché criticisms of Obama are (from the left) that he is a naïve centrist, not the audacious liberal that Democrats thought they were getting, and (from the right) that he is a socialist out to impose government on every corner of American life. But the real problem is that he’s so indistinct no one across the entire political spectrum knows who he is. A chief executive who repeatedly presents himself as a conciliator, forever searching for the “good side” of all adversaries and convening summits, in the end comes across as weightless, if not AWOL. A Rorschach test may make for a fine presidential candidate — when everyone projects their hopes on the guy. But it doesn’t work in the Oval Office: These days everyone is projecting their fears on Obama instead.
Rich then goes on to contrast Obama with New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who enjoys higher approval ratings despite the fact that most of his actual stands on issues are disapproved of by New Jersey's voters. Christie, at least, takes a hard, firm, clear and simply expressed stand on what he believes in. Obama, on the other hand, never takes a firm stand on ANYTHING. When he does express views, it's in a quiet, mealy-mouthed way.
When I, and many like me, voted for Obama in 2008 we thought we were getting a fighter, someone who would give the Republicans a chance to meet on equal ground, but tell them where to go if they wouldn't play ball. Instead, what we got was Neville Chamberlain, if not an outright Marshal Petain.
Obama is exercising ANTIleadership. When his party needs a leader, he's absent or silent. When his followers organize on their own and try to push an agenda, he quashes them and calls them "the professional left." In a period when liberals should have been dominant and conservatives repentant, Obama's actions have directly led to the left being silenced and the right being triumphant despite holding none of the levers of power.
At this point I no longer expect gridlock in the next two years. Instead, unless congressional Democrats turn their backs on Obama entirely, I expect two years indistinguishable from a Republican administration. The differences weren't that great before, anyway.
Obama is incapable of leadership- yet another reason why, for the sake of stopping the Republicans and the fascist-conservative-theocratic movement, Obama has to be defeated in 2012.
