Obama 44: No Command Presence

30 July 2011 |permalink | email article

It was reassuring when President Obama asked for air time to address the country about the looming debt ceiling crisis. But once again he failed to lead, using the bully pulpit to make real news.

On Friday Joe Scarborough, the former Republican congressman who stars on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” early weekday segment, said “I have got to clear this up. Mika (Brzezinski, his co-host) heard two days ago on Capitol Hill Democrats are all saying the same thing. And that is, this president has been invisible, he is not a leader. They said this all behind closed doors. Democratic leaders, Democratic rank-and-file. In fact, 40, 50 of the most powerful Democrats on the Hill.  I will just stop there. The complaints were also the same. The president has vanished. He has left us here alone again like he did with health care. Where is he? Now, they didn’t call him a loser, but they sure as hell didn’t call him a leader.”

Read ‘em and weep

“He has a propensity to be trusting, on the side of reconciliation. He kind of underestimates how ideological these guys are and how determined they are to destroy him.” – Jesse Jackson, saying that President Obama should have been “tougher” with Republicans and less compromising to keep the debt ceiling negotiations from reaching their current crisis point.

“As Congressional leaders scrambled to find some path toward resolution of the fight over raising the government’s debt ceiling, Obama remained largely a bystander, left to implore citizens to phone their lawmakers to press for a deal.” – John Harwood, The New York Times

 

 

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