Can the Dude Abide?

[TeaBagsAreForCups]

Can the Dude Abide?
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: October 30, 2010

Barack Obama became president by brilliantly telling his own story. To stay president, he will need to show he can understand our story. At first it was exciting that Obama was the sort of brainy, cultivated Democrat who would be at home in a “West Wing” episode. But now he acts like he really thinks he’s on “West Wing,” gliding through an imaginary, amber-lit set where his righteous self-regard is bound to be rewarded by the end of the hour. Hey, dude, you’re a politician. Act like one.

As the head of the Democratic Party, the president should have supported the Democratic candidate for governor in Rhode Island, the one the Democratic Governors Association had already lavished more than $1 million in TV ads on. If Obama was going to refuse to endorse Frank Caprio out of respect for Lincoln Chafee, the former Republican who endorsed him for president and is now running as an independent, the president should have at least stayed out of Providence.(*)

Reductio ad absurdum: After two years of taking his base for granted, the former Pied Piper of America’s youth had to spar with Jon Stewart to try to get the attention of young people who once idolized him.

- SNIP -

Because Obama stayed above it all on health care and delegated to Max Baucus, he missed the moment in August of 2009 when Sarah Palin and the Tea Party got oxygen with their loopy rants on death panels. It never occurred to the Icon that such wildness and gullibility would trump lofty rationality. As the president tries to ride the Tea Party tiger, let’s hope for this change: that he puts some audacity in his audacity.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/opinion/31dowd.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Obligatory stipulation:
1. yes, it's Dowd, we know;
2. so in support of saving bandwidth, let me get this out of the way on behalf of those so inclinced: "Maureen Dowd. I stopped reading right there."

The rest of the piece is brilliant, pointed, and a virtual blueprint of why we stand on the eve of one of the most catastrophic - when viewed from the perspective of the morning of January 21, 2009 and the overwhelming potential placed into the hands of our "progressive" President - legislative defeats in the modern era.


(*) >Precisely my argument in an earlier thread on this matter.

[villager]

1. the head/sand crowd has already unrecc'd, of course...

That doesn't change the fact that some audacity in his audacity would be most welcome...

[MineralMan]

3. Commenting about unrecs in the very first post is lame. -10

At least let the OP pick up a few replies before beginning the whine, OK?

[villager]

8. Whining about it is lamer still, especially since I was responding to a "no-comment" unrec

...which is what passes for "debate" on this website...

[TeaBagsAreForCups]

9. Unfortunately, you are...

... correct and echo precisely my thought as I just had a chance to return to this thread. (Especially when you take, in rather ironic perspective, the subject post to which you replied and its companion.)

There was substantial content in Ms Dowd's analysis yet most of what we have seen here in the "quality" of most of these replies is ad hominem, snark, and dismissal sans substance.

I am truly fearful that on Wednesday morning there will be a lot of folks clearing truck loads of sand from their mouths as they withdraw their heads from the piles of it in which they have tunneled to escape the reality of our President's faults and failings.

Although my fervent wish is otherwise, but I suspect it is going to be a very tragic morning that begins the end of what was a real chance for - after thirty long years mostly spent in the intellectual vacuum and wilderness of the GOP - a very hopeful renewal. A renewal that was squandered secondary to a timid and feckless execution on behalf of the progressive and liberal ideal.

[jaxx]

2. Have the votes been counted?

[MineralMan]

4. Hey! Wait! I haven't even had a chance to vote yet.

Damn! And Maureen has already decided the election. Aw, crap!

Unrecced for obvious reasons.

[bigtree]

5. any creature with a pen

. . . can draw a line between those things they don't like about this Democratic presidency. But, Dowd is knowledgeable enough to be objective. Too bad her hard-on against this president colors everything she write about him.

[nashville_brook]

6. "not to lump you in with other presidents..." sparring with Stewart is not a good idea

i love that Dowd picked up on the 'dude' thing. that was a moment of Zen.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

7. Dude. So that's what the D in the new logo stands for.

:evilgrin:

[Swede]

10. I hate the fucking Eagles,man.