In her latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Bottoms Up, Lame Duck" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/01/opinion/dowd-bottoms-up-lame-duck.html?_r=0), Dowd notes Obama's irritability and arrongance while answering a question from ABC News’s Jonathan Karl during yesterday's press conference, marking the hundredth day of his second term. Maureen writes:
"The job of the former community organizer and self-styled uniter is to somehow get this dunderheaded Congress, which is mind-bendingly awful, to do the stuff he wants them to do. It’s called leadership.
He still thinks he’ll do his thing from the balcony and everyone else will follow along below. That’s not how it works."
Obama? Work? He's been having too much fun on the golf course and yukking it up with Conan at Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Leadership? Although leadership can be studied and improved, it cannot be practiced on a virtuoso level by everyone. What are leadership's components? Certainly charisma, which cannot be taught. Add to the list, a willingness to accept risk - again something for which we are not all wired - and abundant confidence and an ability to make snap decisions, which are not present in all of us.
Or in other words, Obama is the antithesis of a leader: Although intelligent and charismatic, he is slow to make decisions and reluctant to rule by fiat.
But Dowd failed to notice what wasn't discussed at the press conference. Some 5 million Americans are considered long-term unemployed, i.e. they have been looking for work for six months or more, and this number doesn’t include people who have stopped looking for work. Also, almost 50 million Americans are on food stamps. This is a horror story which shouldn't have been ignored by the president.
Dowd did briefly mention in passing Obama's prolonged inaction concerning the ongoing civil war in Syria, which has left more than 70,000 people dead:
"After Syria, Obama discussed another issue where he came across like a frustrated witness to history, rather than shaper of it."
Or what has been labeled "leadership from behind."
Concerning Syria, Obama said the following:
"What we now have is evidence that chemical weapons have been used inside of Syria, but we don't know how they were used, when they were used, who used them. We don't have a chain of custody that establishes what exactly happened . . . I've got to make sure I've got the facts."
You will recall that Obama previously stated that the use by Syria's Bashar al-Assad of chemical weapons would cross a "red line." Well, make no mistake about it - Assad has used chemical weapons against the rebels, as I've unequivocally told those who read this blog (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2013/04/chuck-hagel-opines-on-syria-is-americas.html), and as subsequently acknowledged by America's block headed secretary of defense, Chuck Hagel.
However, I also admit that Obama now faces a quandary. Owing to his delay in acting, there are no "moderates" among Syria's rebels. We are only looking at radical jihadists, many with links to al-Qaeda.
What to do? Unfortunately, there is a now a need to made a deal with the devil. The US needs to destroy Syrian airbases, chemical weapons depots and Scud missiles in exchange for some sort of commitment that the rebels will not engage in wanton slaughter of Syria's Alawites when Assad falls, which he will.
No American boots on the ground, of course.
The added benefit: the destruction of the Iranian, Syrian, Hezbollah triumvirate.
Can Obama bring himself to do it? As George Harrison once sang:
"It's gonna take time,
A whole lot of precious time"
Meanwhile, this situation is not getting any better.
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