LEAVE US ACCEPT THE NOTION THAT HIS COMMUNITY ORGANIZING WAS A SIGNIFICANT EXPERIENCE...:

Obama’s Failure of Leadership (Eleanor Clift, 10/01/10, Newsweek)

Obama’s background as a community organizer may be hampering him as president. While his supporters still like him, they’re not so sure he has what it takes to bring about the hope and change he promised and excited the base. A community organizer empowers people to do things for themselves, and in government, you have to lead and order and direct, and that’s not Obama’s style, even though Republicans call him autocratic and Rush Limbaugh calls him “Ayatollah Obama.” Obama has had a lot of success in politics and academia, and on the mean streets of Chicago, by reaching consensus, and he expected to apply that life lesson now that he’s at the pinnacle of power, and it didn’t work.

I’m loath to admit it, but I think there’s been a failure of leadership in this White House.

...wouldn't applying what Ms Clift believes to have been his modus operandi then have been more successful both as to bipartisanship and as to policy than leaving matters to congressional Democrats? Had he structured the stimulus around the idea of empowering people to do things for themselves--by rebating their tax dollars, for instance--he'd have had support from Republicans and from economic history. Likewise, had he made Health Savings Accounts the centerpiece of his health care plan it would have appealed to the GOP as well as achieving the cost cuts and universality he spoke of wanting and would have re-empowered the consumers of medicine.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 2, 2010 7:38 PM