Regardless of whether critics of the President, myself included, are correct or incorrect about our negative assessment of him, that negative impression has continued to grow over time.
I remember two years ago asking a DC-based reporter for the MSM if it was just me, or were people starting to feel like the President was a bit of a wimp. He said it wasn't just me. The impression of the President was that he was afraid of a fight. This was the summer of 09. Just six months in office, and a very bad impression of the President was starting to grow.
It's worse now. It's spread to more people - including far too many people who raised money for, and donated their time to, the President's campaign - and just as bad, the assessment has gotten harsher, and continues to harshen.
My point is that a lot of us saw this coming. And rather than deal with it, in some way, the White House has only reinforced the negative image of the President. And negatives, if given time to sink in, are awfully hard to turn around. At some point, far too many people believe the negative for you to simply write them all off as ex-Hillary supporters, racists, the professional left, or the Internet left fringe. And by the time the President starts dealing with this reality, it may too late change it.
Here's Dana Milbank on yesterday's White House briefing.
Various reporters tried to elicit more information about Obama’s economic plans and deficit-reduction proposals, but Carney declined again to take the lead.
“I don’t want to get too far ahead of the process,” he explained to the Wall Street Journal’s Laura Meckler, adding that Obama “will be contributing to that process, not driving it or directing it.”
“Why?” inquired Politico’s Glenn Thrush. “He’s the leader of the free world. Why isn’t he leading this process?”
That is the enduring mystery of Obama’s presidency. He delivered his statement on the economy beneath a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, but that was as close as he came to forceful leadership. He looked grim and swallowed hard and frequently as he mixed fatalism (“markets will rise and fall”) with vague, patriotic exhortations (“this is the United States of America”).
“There will always be economic factors that we can’t control,” Obama said. Maybe. But it would be nice if the president gave it a try.
