Is Obama Too Thoughtful?

[vegiegals]

I would rather have the fire in the belly Obama of the campaign trail. We tend to get a lot of mush at times.



http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-02-13/is-obama-too-thoughtful/?cid=hp:beastoriginalsR3


Is Obama Too Thoughtful?


Mike Signer

Mike Signer is a Virginia-based lawyer, an adjunct professor at Virginia Tech, and a Senior Fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute. He is the author of Demagogue: The Fight to Save Democracy from Its Worst Enemies (Palgrave Macmillan 2009). In 2009, he was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia.



“e need a commander in chief, not a professor of law standing at the lectern.” That’s what Sarah Palin told Tea Partiers in Nashville last weekend, triggering uproarious cheers. A few weeks earlier, she had dismissed Obama’s State of the Union as “quite a bit of lecturing, not leading.” Meanwhile, John McCain just borrowed the “lecturer” line to attack Obama in the Financial Times.

Palin and her partners seem intent on turning one of Obama’s strengths—his thoughtfulness—into a liability. Such broadsides threaten to dominate political and policy debates not just in November’s mid-term elections, but the 2012 presidential election as well. The administration should take note and pivot quickly. The fact is that voters often need a bolder narrative, one whose plot turns on actions and victories, not just the calls to civil discourse and contemplation that have come to mark Obama’s presidency.

In a cage-match between nihilism and Niebuhr, who would you bet on? This all means Obama is going to need to fight—hard.

The intellectual has always held a hallowed, fraught place in American politics. In Saul Bellow’s novel Humboldt’s Gift, set in the 1950s, Bellow’s slightly ridiculous poet-hero Von Humboldt Fleisher showers praise on Adlai Stevenson, the “great souled” intellectual Democratic nominee for a president whose “chief of staff would know Thucydides.” “Intellectuals are coming up in this country,” Humboldt says. “Democracy is finally about to begin creating a civilization in the USA.”......................

[Akoto]

1. After eight years of that dumbass ...

I can't believe I'm seeing a editorial title which even suggests thoughtfulness to be a bad thing.

[babylonsister]

2. Unlike idiot son, who didn't seem to have a clear thought in what

remains of his mind? I'll take thoughtful, thanks.

[Kahuna]

3. That question sounds like something wolf blizter or alex twit would ask...

in others words, trying to plant a though. Sheesh.

[liberal N proud]

4. They want to return to the brainless president

Palin 2012.

What the fuck is wrong with intelligence?

[bemildred]

5. No, that isn't the problem.

He could be more assertive, but being a hipshooter like Bush won't help him do that.

[yurbud]

6. the problem is not the thought but the policies at the end of the thought

[truedelphi]

7. He's not too thoughtful - he is too controlled. But

Of course, maybe the decision to be the puppet of Big Money forces came after a lot of thought.

[ChicagoSuz219]

8. As opposed to...

...going off half-cocked & overreacting to everyone/everything without regard for the consequences?

Hmmmm... you may be right.

I, for one, can live with that.