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Hillarysworld -> We Told You So The Kool Aid Recovery Forum -> Once More, With Feeling (NY Times 5/29/10)
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TOPIC: Once More, With Feeling (NY Times 5/29/10)
Jen the Michigander


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Once More, With Feeling (NY Times 5/29/10)
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/opinion/30dowd.html

Well, well, well...

First it was Chris "Tingles" Matthews, then it was David Gergen, and now Maureen Dowd has lost that lovin' feeling. I wonder who'll be next? Maybe we should start a Kool-Aid Hangover Pool?

President Spock’s behavior is illogical.

Once more, he has willfully and inexplicably resisted fulfilling a signal part of his job: being a prism in moments of fear and pride, reflecting what Americans feel so they know he gets it.

“This president needs to tell BP, ’I’m your daddy,’ “ scolded James Carville, a New Orleans resident, as he called Barack Obama’s response to Louisiana’s new watery heartbreak “lackadaisical.”

In the campaign, Obama’s fight flagged to the point that his donors openly upbraided him. In the Oval, he waited too long to express outrage and offer leadership on A.I.G., the banks, the bonuses, the job loss and mortgage fears, the Christmas underwear bomber, the death panel scare tactics, the ugly name-calling of Tea Party protesters.

Too often it feels as though Barry is watching from a balcony, reluctant to enter the fray until the clamor of the crowd forces him to come down. The pattern is perverse. The man whose presidency is rooted in his ability to inspire withholds that inspiration when it is most needed.

For five weeks, it looked as though Obama considered the gushing that became the worst oil spill in U.S. history a distraction, like a fire alarm going off in the middle of a law seminar he was teaching. He’ll deal with it, but he’s annoyed because it’s not on his syllabus.

Even if Obama doesn’t watch “Treme” on HBO, it’s strange that he would not have a more spontaneous emotional response to another horrendous hit for Louisiana, with residents and lawmakers crying on the news and dead pelicans washing up on shore. But then, he didn’t make his first-ever visit to New Orleans until nearly a year after Katrina hit. “I never had occasion to be here,” he told The Times’s Jeff Zeleny, then at The Chicago Tribune.

Just as President Clinton once protested to reporters that he was still “relevant,” President Obama had to protest to reporters last week that he has feelings.

He seemed to tune out a bit after the exhausting battle over health care, with the air of someone who says to himself: “Oh, man, that was a heavy lift. I’m taking a break.”

He’s spending the holiday weekend in Chicago when he should be commemorating Memorial Day here with the families of troops killed in battle and with veterans at Arlington Cemetery.

I highlight this not because it's an original thought. Quite the opposite-- I've seen these exact sentiments posted on the walls of my Facebook friends who aren't political. In other words, an elite liberal media figure actually sounds like a real person here.

Republican senators who had a contentious lunch with the president last week described him as whiny, thin-skinned and in over his head, and there was extreme Democratic angst at the White House’s dilatory and deferential attitude on the spill.

Even more than with the greedy financiers and arrogant carmakers, it was important to offend and slap back the deceptive malefactors at BP.

Obama and top aides who believe in his divinity make a mistake to dismiss complaints of his aloofness as Washington white noise. He treats the press as a nuisance rather than examining his own inability to encapsulate Americans’ feelings.

“The media may get tired of the story, but we will not,” he told Gulf Coast residents when he visited on Friday. Actually, if it weren’t for the media, the president would probably never have woken up from his torpor and flown down there.

Instead of getting Bill Clinton to offer Joe Sestak a job, Obama should be offering Clinton one. Bill would certainly know how to gush at a gusher gone haywire. Let him resume a cameo role as Feeler in Chief. The post is open.

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freespirit


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I do love to see the Obama faithful having doubts about his divinity. Carville knew all along that O didn't have the testicular fortitude for the job - remember his remark about Hillary having more cajones? lol

Dowd seems confused most of the time, but maybe she's becoming a little more cogent - if she recognizes that The One is merely a legend in his own mind - not the force she thought he was.

Finally, people are waking up and smelling the coffee. It's a whole lot stronger than the aroma of kool-aide.

Yes, Jen, I think a Kool-aide hang-over pool would be very appropriate.

Great article.

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It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union.... Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.  ~Susan B. Anthony
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