Home
D&D
Music
Banner Archive

Marvel Comics Timeline
Godzilla Timeline


RSS

   

« Russia Catches Up to the 1980s on the "War on Drugs" | Main | The Perfect Number of Teeth »

If someone needs a political advisor, i am available

Reasonable Conservative™ David Frum looks at a David Brooks column critiquing Obama's lack of leadership, and follows up with:

Yet Brooks has laid out the most useful and effective critique of Barack Obama for Republicans in 2012: The job has overwhelmed the man. He's not an alien, he's not a radical. He's just not the person the country needs. He's not tough enough, he's not imaginative enough, and he's not determined enough.

In the throes of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, the president ran out of ideas sometime back in 2009.

In the face of opposition, Obama goes passive. The mean Republicans refused votes on his Federal Reserve nominees and Obama ... did nothing. Would Ronald Reagan have done nothing? FDR? Lyndon Johnson?

With unemployment at 10% and interest rates at 1%, the president got persuaded that it was debt and interest that trumped growth and jobs as Public Issue #1.

Frankly, i agree with it. And while i should know better, i could imagine myself voting for a Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty or Jon Huntsman who makes that argument. You start to think to yourself that a moderate (or "moderate") Republican would basically have the same agenda as Obama and wouldn't have to deal with Republican obstructionism. And while i'll probably come around in the end (i'd never vote for a Republican, just a question of whether i can bring myself to vote for Obama or go third party), i bet a lot of people won't. That leads Brad DeLong to say:

As a result, for the first time I think it is more likely than not that Obama will lose the 2012 election. Never mind that as a reality-based leader he will be vastly superior to whatever wingnut or hypocrite the Republicans serve up--if the elite press adopts Frum's critique, then we have sixteen months to listen to the media speak with one voice about how Obama is not tough and decisive enough to be a good president.

Matthew Yglesias, one of Obama's biggest defenders (see here), also finds Frum's argument persuasive.

I just don't understand this president's strategy.

By fnord12 | June 28, 2011, 10:26 PM | Liberal Outrage