Obama's decision-making process. Deliberative, or overly compromising?

The Washington Post has an interesting story today about President Obama's decision-making process. Ignore the quotes from the Republicans - they're in this game for politics, not offering any kind of honest criticism.

Liberals have zinged him as being too cautious, too much of a compromiser. Some of his supporters would like to see him show more fire in the belly and recapture the energy that propelled him to victory last year.

"I think the Obama we've seen as president is a very different Obama than we saw during the campaign. He doesn't seem to be connected, he doesn't seem to have the passion, he doesn't seem to be conveying the grand and inspiring vision," says the progressive historian Allan Lichtman of American University. "If you want to be a transformational president, you've got to take the risks."

Sean Wilentz, a history professor at Princeton, says Obama has suffered from unrealistic expectations among those who put him in office. "They kind of were sold Utopia, and they bought it, and it didn't happen," he says. "People were comparing the candidate to Abraham Lincoln before he served a day of his presidency. Nobody can live up to that."

I agree with the first two grafs. The third is ill-informed. No one has criticized Obama for not being Lincoln. (Though I will say, don't run on being a larger than life figure who promises larger than life change unless you plan to deliver.) A lot of the criticism of this president has been over his willingness to cave on a promise at the drop of a hat, even when he holds some pretty damn good cards. Or, on gay rights issues, among others, to watch the Obama administration actually harm the community by, for example, defending anti-gay laws in court.

This is about far more than simply whether Barack Obama is Abraham Lincoln in his first year. And its rather disingenuous, or at the very least uninformed, to suggest it is. A lot of Democrats are not pleased. And their grievances are real, and merited.

(The British defense secretary doesn't seem particularly impressed either.)