I cannot stand Maureen Dowd. There, I've said it. The New York Times columnist brought nastiness and misrepresentation to a new height during her tenure with the Times. Nevertheless, she seems to have gotten it exactly correct in her latest column. Here, in her own words, is the essence of what she has to say about president Obama:
"It’s not enough to understand how everybody in the room thinks. You have to decide which ones in the room are right, and stand with them. A leader is not a mediator or an umpire or a convener or a facilitator.
Sometimes, as Chris Christie put it, 'the president has got to show up.'”
How true. We have a president who cannot seem to make up his mind on which side he stands, or he decides to stand on both. We get speeches about reining in spending, but the only plan he puts forward raises spending dramatically. He agrees to a deal to keep taxes fixed for two years which ought to remove some of the uncertainty from the economy, but then he immediately starts campaigning to raise taxes again, thereby undoing all the good he did with the original deal. He uses the excuse to intervene in Libya that the USA will not stand by while a government uses the millitary to slaughter its own people. Then, he remains silent while the Syrian government kills many more of its own people than the Libyan governement ever did. Silent! No explanation! Nothing!
Dowd points out the disparity of the Afghan policy. She is also fixated on the issue of gay marriage where Obama's statements and actions do not match. The point, however, is not Obama's actions on specific issues; rather, it is the question of Obama's ability to lead. Actually, I should have said Obama's LACK of ability to lead. There are times when it is best not to decide about an issue and to do further study. No one would deny that. It is certain, however, that further study and indecisiveness should not be the default response from a leader. And it is more than certain that further study and indecisiveness cannot be the perpetual response from a leader. But that is what we get with Obama.
I have to wonder what it is about Obama that makes him this way. Is he lazy, unwilling to spend the time to come to a final position? There are facts from which one could conclude that to be the case. He left it up to Congress to draft the Stimulus bill, and we got a melange of political programs and Democrat give aways as a result. He left it up to Congress to draft most of Obamacare, and we are still discovering the hidden provisions that will cost hundreds of billions of dollars due to a lack of oversight. He has stayed out of the negotiations to raise the debt ceiling until the GOP dragged him into them two days ago. He has played more golf that any president in living memory. Even so, I do not believe that Obama is lazy.
So what is it that leaves him unable to lead? The real truth here is that Obama lack focus and understanding. He believes that words speak louder than actions. Speeches beat results. And he is certain that his own speeches can do essentially anything. This lack of understanding of reality means that the president thinks he has handled a problem once he has given a speech about it. Sadly, this is the mechanism that governs in a campaign, especially if one is not in office already. Obama learned that if he had a problem with Reverend Wright, a speech solved it. If he had a problem with "bitter clngers" a few speeches solved it. He still thinks that this mechanism worked. We had a problem with the Muslim world. Obama gave a speech in Cairo in 2009 and it was "solved" in his mind. This happens over and over again.
Unfortunately for the country, even when the president lives in a fantasy world where speeches count more than actions, America does not and cannot. We are stuck in a world where we need a decisive leader, one who is not afraid to do what is necessary.
Hopefully, this problem will be solved in November of 2012.
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