Presidents – and politicians in general – enter from stage left with big words and big promises. Sometimes they deliver and sometimes they fail miserably. Often this is because they have huge egos that get in the way and they think they can just command things to be done.
That may work for a while, but eventually, it stops working and they start doing evil things, to get done what they want to do. In most cases that kind of behavior catches up with them eventually.
And so it is with Barack Obama. Looking back at Richard Nixon’s presidency at about the five year mark, there are similarities. Obama’s own constituency has started to turn on him too.
Mr. Obama is a finger-pointer, not a good thing for someone who is supposed to be the leader of the free world. A leader he is not, other than in finger-pointing. Even liberal columnist Maureen Dowd of The New York Times has had enough of his “whining” and “whiffing” about criticism over his administration. She isn’t the only liberal media pundit making noises about his wimpiness.
On Tuesday, Dowd wrote a story, talking directly to Obama. She said, “An American president should never say, as you did to the New Yorker editor, David Remnick, about presidents throughout history: ‘We’re part of a long-running story. We just try to get our paragraph right.’ Mr. President, I am just trying to get my paragraph right. You need to think bigger, and instead show the leadership people expect as America’s commander-in-chief.”
That is powerful stuff from the pages of The New York Times.
For the past five years, the supportive liberal media have fiercely defended Obama. They have finally grown tired of his complaining. Dowd wrote “Obama has put himself in a weak position because he appears to have resigned from the possibility of making great historic strides on the world stage.”
Dowd was not through with her criticism of the president. “An American president should never say, as you did to the New Yorker editor, David Remnick, about presidents throughout history: ‘We’re part of a long-running story. We just try to get our paragraph right.’ Mr. President, I am just trying to get my paragraph right. You need to think bigger,” she wrote.
It is a rarity to see anyone from the New York Times take a swipe at the Obama administration, much less the president himself. It shows how disgruntled the left is becoming with the president’s weaknesses and low poll ratings going into the November midterms.
This isn’t the first time any liberal media have given Obama low marks. Back in June 2012, on MSNBC, Bloomberg View columnist Jonathan Alter and The Daily Beast’s Zachary Karabell panned him. The show’s anchor, Tamron Hall was alarmed at their expression, and tried to get them to be positive about Obama, but his 54 minute speech was so weak that they continued.
Now back to the recent past, Obama’s recent Philippines visit did not do anything for his credibility with Dowd, because he again acted like a spoiled child rather than the leader of the free world. Obama’s behavior at a press conference in the Philippines was another example of weak leadership, Dowd said.
“An American president should never say as you did Monday in Manila when you got frustrated in a press conference with the Philippine president: ‘You hit singles; you hit doubles. Every once in a while, we may be able to hit a home run.’ Especially now that we have this scary World War III vibe with the Russians, we expect the president, especially one who ran as Babe Ruth, to hit home runs.” – Maureen Dowd, The New York Times
Dowd’s final paragraph was the most surprising for any New York liberal. “How can we accept these reduced expectations and truculent passivity from the man who offered himself up as the moral beacon of the world, even before he was elected?”
Note to Ms. Dowd: Welcome back to reality – half of the country has been saying this for several years.
