My State of the Union Dilemma

I got a totally unnecessary text from Buzzard this morning reminding me that the speech and the Ohio State-Purdue basketball game both start at 9:00 p.m. eastern tonight. While I responded that “this is why God invented the DVR” I’m not sure yet which one will get the delayed viewing.

On the one hand Buzz went to Purdue and I Ohio State, which presents a unique trash-texting opportunity. The Buckeyes are 20-0 and ranked #1, but Purdue is also highly ranked and 17-3. A game like this would normally have my full focus for the evening.

But the Obama University-Southwest GOP State game is looking pretty interesting too. OU is definitely on a mini-winning streak at the moment, with the latest polls putting him at a 55% approval rating – his highest in months. Expect more easy-listening rhetoric.

And then we have the post-speech SWGOPS rebuttal in which Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) will call Obama a socialist and promise to balance the budget without mentioning that he will also eliminate Social Security, Medicare, Pell Grants, the Post Office and the FDA along the way.

We also have the unusual seating arrangements to look forward to, wherein the two teams have decided to have their respective pep squads sitting intermingled like some kind of bi-partisan daisy chain; although I gather Mitch McConnell has decided to scowl his way through the President’s speech apart from any opposing team fans and will instead sit next to and hold hands with Supreme Court Justice Thomas whose wife is out of town stalking Anita Hill.

I think it’s unlikely this new interparty sociability will lead to any sustained political cooperation but I am hoping it cuts down on the standing ovations which are more numerous every year. At Ohio State games we do the standing “O-H-I-O!” cheer but only during time outs; Congress leaps to its feet in response to every innocuous of comment creating time outs which will be especially annoying tonight when each standing O delays the start of the game another 90 seconds.

Washington is second only to Hollywood in gratuitous self-congratulations; they need Ricky Gervais to MC the SOTU speech or at least a Big Ten ref to call a few “delay of game” technicals.

What if?

What if in 2012 people look back at nearly four years of the Obama administration and think:

“Well, he didn’t get everything I’d hoped for but he got health care for 30 million people, he got unemployment benefits extended for the jobless, a substantial tax cut for middle class Americans and financial reform. He gave up huge tax cuts for wealthy people and the health care and financial reform bills weren’t perfect, but I blame the Republicans for that. And I blame the Republicans for road-blocking an agreement with Russia on nuclear arms and a bunch of other things too.”

What if all the TARP money is repaid with interest and GM is profitable and adding to their workforce? What if unemployment drops to under 7% and seems likely to continue a steady if slow recovery?

What if he and his team regain their communications mojo and tell their story with simplicity and passion?

What if people stop thinking Obama is afraid to fight for what is right, and begin to see him as the one sane person in national politics; the one person willing to step away from the partisan bickering that has accomplished nothing? What if people start accepting that politics is the art of the possible?

I don’t know if I even think this way and there are a lot of “ifs” in the above. I’m just wondering.

West Point Afghanistan speech

President Obama’s speech from West Point tonight was one of his best. He made a strong, logical argument, and even infused it with a little emotion – something he injects into most of his speeches too sparingly.

Never-the-less, I am not persuaded that we will accomplish in the next eighteen months what we have failed to accomplish in the past eight years, using less than half as many troops as we’ve had in Iraq.

What will Afghanistan be like in a year after we pull out? The appropriate analogy is that is will be changed just as much as the glass of water is changed once one removes a finger from it.

It was very hard to look at all the strong young faces in the West Point audience – literally the best America has to offer – without wondering which of them will leave life or limb in the Afghan mountains, trying in vain to prop up a corrupt government while fighting a ghost army.

The Bush administration left Obama with few choices – none of them easy – but I fear he is not choosing wisely. We need to get out of there now and rebuild this country. Every day we spend in Afghanistan we’re nothing more than the most effective recruiting agent for the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

A big week

President Obama is giving a speech today, and it is his one big chance to convince America’s school children of the importance of becoming homosexuals, getting lots of abortions, reading Marx, and keeping prayer out of their lives. I hope he nails it – otherwise what kind of future is in store for this country?

Then tomorrow we get something that FDR did only once in nearly 12 years as President (and that was to declare war on Japan) – an address to a joint session of Congress. The President will speak on health care and I want to add my voice to the chorus singing “this better be good.”

Issues don’t get much more complicated than this, and the economic stakes are rarely higher. After months of public debate I’m only sure of two things: 1) the Republicans are against everything and 2) I don’t know what Obama really wants.

It’s time for him to make clear what it is he wants, and to beat the Democrats in Congress into submission until he gets it. If he does that, I believe he will ultimately get some Republican support, and he will certainly regain some of his losses among independents. He can live without the former, but not without the latter.

Barack Obama will never be an effective leader of the country until he can demonstrate the ability to lead his own party. It isn’t too late, but it might be a week from now.

Bill & Kim

This photo was easily my favorite of the week. Say whatever you want about Bill Clinton, but nobody plays the role of ex-president better than him. In the photo, Bill is Snow White with Kim as Grumpy; the two of them and the other six dwarves seem to be posed in front of the evil witch’s mirror gone hi-def. Or is that a scene from Fantasia behind them? Sorry to mix my movie metaphors.

I don’t understand what all the fuss was about. Bill will go to the opening of a car wash if the money is right, so in this case he got paid in his favorite currency – attention – and he brought home the bacon. Speaking of the bacon, why has no one asked, “what were those women doing strolling along (or over) the border of North Koreas?” Hadn’t they heard it was dangerous there? I’m glad they got home, and I’m glad we made the effort to get them, but isn’t the appropriateness of their own behavior worth examining here?

I’d call the response to last week’s post “general agreement” with the premise that Congress is corrupt, but it fell short of an outcry to light the torches and grab the closest pitchfork. In the meantime, Billy Tauzin, who was formerly a US Congressman who oversaw the drug industry, and is now the $3 million a year hear of PhRMA, the drug industry lobby group, took President Obama to the cleaners. Billy is the guy who got Congress to insert a provision into the Medicare part D legislation enacted under Bush II, which prohibited the government from negotiating for the best price with prescription drug manufacturers.

Last week, in closed-door meetings with administration officials, he got them to agree to prevent Congress from rescinding that law in gratitude for the $80 billion in savings Billy’s group already offered to cut from drug expenses over the next 10 years. Never mind that independent audits say the provision is costing the government $20 billion a year in foregone savings. Another case of democracy in auction.

Because of his former position in Congress, BT isn’t even supposed to engage in lobbying but what’s a minor detail like that to important people like him?

If you want more examples, read Frank Rich’s column from last Sunday to see who big pharma and the insurance industry is paying off now. According to the Congressional Quarterly, in the first half of 2009 the 18 members of Congress overseeing health care reform got an average of $100,000 each – including Nancy Pelosi. But I’m sure that won’t effect their decisions.

With friends like these…

President Obama would have been better off if the Republicans had been able to hold on to a few more seats. Unfortunately, instead of having a real enemy to fight he is stuck with a super majority of his own party; with friends like these, who needs enemies?

As always, David Brooks says it so much than me today, but I’ve been concerned from the very earliest days of this administration that Obama is just not tough enough for the job that needs to be done. I believe him to be a smart, sincere, pragmatic person, but he is a captive of a political party that isn’t any of those things, and he is letting them call the shots.

If you gave me 100-1 odds I would not bet five dollars that we’ll get a health care bill enacted that does a damn thing to curb the rise in health care costs. To do so would mean challenging the health care establishment like big pharma and insurance companies, and the gravy train they’ve been riding for 50 years. The Dems are not one bit more likely to do that than the Republicans were. In fact, the only difference between the two parties that I can see is for which business interest they principally whore.

The only hope is if the President stands up and says “enough!” and it doesn’t look to me like Obama is going to do it. The media is all a twitter over the Republican’s “stop Obama’s health care plan” initiative. Why? Who cares? The Republicans aren’t going to be a factor. They are just background noise. The bloated, blubbery, self-serving slab of pork the Democrats are creating has clogged most American’s arteries before it even gets out of the kitchen.

That pig is already dead. They may still force us to eat it, but they’ll pay for it in ’10.

St. Barack and the dragon

The dragon is Congress and we are the Princess. If BHO can’t get the Parliament of Whores ("Democrats are the party of government activism, the party that says government can make you richer, smarter, taller and get the chickweed out of your lawn. Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work, and they get elected and prove it.") under control, and soon, they may just ruin his Presidency before he even gets a chance to show us what he can do.

Why does he continue to play Obambi with them? Americans hold Congress in lower esteem than even the reviled GWB. What could make better political sense than using his considerable political capital to take them on and break them of their belief that the U.S. Treasury is their own personal slush fund?

Good Lord, even Maureen Dowd is starting to comment on the bountiful portions of pork they ladled into the current budget, and on BHO’s unwillingness to stop them despite his campaign promise to end this practice. The earmarks may represent a small portion of the budget, but they are a powerful symbol of Washington’s arrogance and waste.

Watching the Congressional budget hearings yesterday and listening to the ignorance that oozed from nearly every question our legislators asked made me cringe. These people are truly fools.
If he stomps on them now he’ll be a hero to millions – including to many of his critics on the right. If he doesn’t, he’ll be a prisoner to Pelosi and Reid for four years and will be building his Presidential Library by 2012.

Obama so far

President Obama has been is office one month today. On the one hand it seems completely unfair to judge him after such a short time period. But on the other, let’s be honest, we judge everybody pretty much all the time – can’t help it – it’s what people do. Having posed the question, I shall answer it as well, based on three main areas.

The Team: By-and-large he has appointed high quality people and he did it very quickly compared to previous administrations, but I remain disappointed that Geithner and Daschle made it through the ethical screen. But, hey, it’s Washington. Grade: B

The Plan. The economic recovery legislation could end up an A or an F; only time will tell. He deserves credit for getting it done quickly, but way too much control was given to the Pelosi-Reid crowd, and it smells to me more like a pork barrel than a focused economic tool. (Does anyone think a mag-lev train running between Disneyland and Las Vegas is critical economic priority?) It’s an enormous amount of money, but I fear it isn’t enough, or the right kind of stuff, to really make a difference. I also believe the big banks should be nationalized and dozens of senior people should be fired. The mortgage relief plan is hard to like. As Dennis Miller said on Leno last night, “We gotta help the helpless, but the clueless – I don’t give a rat’s ass about.” I hope with all my heart I’m wrong on this package, but…Grade: D.

Politics. Here again, I’ve been disappointed. He should have been tougher on Congress and on the bankers. Our problems were caused by too many people to make it possible to ever point an accurate finger of blame. But it would do a lot for the general morale to fire a few millionaire business-criminals and to publically humiliate a few political hacks. A little demagoguery isn’t so bad if it is used strategically.

Obama has also spent too much effort scaring the public in an effort to build support for his economic plans. Given the state of things I don’t believe many needed it; they know things are bad. We need the President to be the guy who inspires us to believe we can overcome these problems and be great again. Grade: C-

Overall: C- , but this student shows promise and there is a long way to go before school lets out.
Let’s hear your grade, but please, no “Incompletes.” If you aren’t willing to stick your neck out just go watch TV.

Obama press conference tonight @ 8:00

I have nothing more to say until I hear what the President has to say tonight. I'm hoping for a more effective sales job on the stimulus package. Everything I've seen and heard so far has been long on platitude and short on specifics; for example, his most recent Weekly Address.

I'd like to see him pick one thing and go into it in some detail. What is the new electrical grid they keep talking about? Why is it good, and how many jobs will it create? And don't be afraid to throw a couple of charts up there. If we heard more about the really meaty things we'd be less likely to be distracted and angered by the parochial pork-barrel stuff that Congress added.

Obambi

BHO has got to get tougher. It’s time to Cowboy-up and kick some bootie; there’s no time to even take names. He’s just been too nice.

The TGIF party for the Republicans a couple weeks ago was a good try, in the spirit of bipartisanship and all. Much good it did him, but it was smart to try. He went the extra mile.
And it was good to hear him get a little froggie with the GOP yesterday. They don’t need to be reminded that he won the election, but the American people probably do. I don’t really understand it, but Democrats, regardless of who they are or how big they won, seem to be always on the defensive. The Republican brand may only represent the way 40% or fewer of Americans affiliate themselves, but they always act like winners – as if they know they are the smartest and their ideas are the best. Democratic politicians are always explaining subtleties and apologizing.

So now we have a pretty bad stimulus bill that is bad because the old-school Congressional Dems loaded it up with local pork that won’t stimulate anything except reelection contributions from the home front. Then in a wimpy and unsuccessful attempt to appease the GOP, they layered in some more of the kind of tax-cuts Obama ran against. I don’t know if they are a good idea or a bad one, but everyone knows he doesn’t want them and that they are being forced on him, making him look weaker still.

Now the always-defensive Dems really have something to feel defensive about, but being members of Congress they are sociopathicly unable to actually fix it. Giving the appearance of a repair job in the joint committee is the best they are going to be able to do.

It is the Democratic Congressional leadership the President needs to invite -- not to cocktails in Williamsburg -- but to the nearest woodshed for a good, old-fashioned, south-side-of-Chicago, ass whoopin’.

He needs to do it so they’ll fix the bill, and to make everyone remember who won the election and who is in charge. It’s up to him, and only he can do it. Because no one in this country, regardless of political point-of-view, will be lead by Bambi. We prefer to be lead by the Duke or Dirty Harry.

Give Rick a chance

There are two things that have been on my mind lately that I’d like to throw out for your comments. The first is a question: What, exactly, do the people who are criticizing the Israelis, expect them to do in lieu of their current actions against Hamas?

Should they simple accept that Hamas will launch 10-20 rockets per day into Israel and do nothing? And what exactly would be a “proportionate response?” Would that be to randomly fire an equal number of unguided missiles into the West Bank and let them fall where they may, regardless of the distribution of the civilian population?

My other thought is directed to all people of a more liberal persuasion: You should give the Reverend Rick Warren, and more importantly the people who follow him, a break over his speaking at the Obama inauguration.

I realize he and his followers stand for some things that you could never support. But while he is probably well to the right of you, he is a long way from the extreme end of the belief curve, and represents a moderating influence on many people.

Barack Obama only won 53% of the votes in November, which leaves a lot of Americans looking at him sideways, just waiting for a signal that he truly doesn’t care about people like them. Inviting Warren to speak was a political olive branch to a group of people whose support Obama will need if he is to solve the many problems facing our country. These problems are big beyond the imagination’s ability to grasp them, and we can’t afford a continuation of the political and social polarity that has kept us from addressing them for decades.

By definition, that means working with people with whom we may not be in complete agreement, and someone has to be the bigger person – the one who takes the first step. Isn’t that why you voted for Obama in the first place?

Barack the conservative

Barack Obama is going to surprise a lot of people by being more conservative than expected. And by “conservative” I mean both in the sense of cautious as well as ideologically. As David Brook’s quoted Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center in his column this morning, “This was an election where the middle asserted itself. There was “no sign” of a “movement to the left.” Brook’s expect Obama to govern that way and makes a persuasive case.

The Rahm Emanuel pick is a good first sign. I remembered and reread a Fortune article from September 2006 in which Democratic strategist Paul Begala, who described Emanuel's aggressive style as a "cross between a hemorrhoid and a toothache." But the point of the article was more that Emanuel is both smart and pragmatic and he knows how things work at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

A funny quote is attributed to Bill Clinton just after the ’92 election, in which after being asked how he felt, he was reported to have said, “like a dog that finally caught the pickup truck he’d been chasing.” That may have contributed to his waiting until just a week or so before taking office to pick his WH staff, which turned out to be the wrong people. Obama did this first and picked pros.

Did you know Obama is considered to be a pretty good poker player? If you did it was despite his campaign staff’s strenuous efforts to keep it under wraps until after the election. It’s not a bad skill for a President to have.

How much interest is there in the election? By noon on Wednesday you couldn’t find a copy of the New York Times anywhere for love nor money. Copies are for sale on eBay starting at $40 and going up from there. Time magazine is out today. They normally put out office copies for employees first thing in the morning, but there were none today and they have gone back to press to print an additional 200,000 copies. I think a lot of people are starting their own family time capsules.

Here’s a quote I heard the other day, apropos of nothing special: “Experience is the name that everyone gives to their mistakes.” Oscar Wilde.

Counting the days

It has felt to me for some time like the White House had been taken over by a band of corrupt, stupid, frat boys bent on sacking the Treasury and rubbing everyone’s nose in it for fun. Well, we can count the days now until they are gone. They could do a lot more damage in the two and a half months they have left, but frat-boy-cheerleader-in-chief seems inclined to keep a low profile and just slink out of town. Good riddance.

If nothing else, it will be great to have a President who can stand up and make a speech like the one President-elect Obama made last night in Chicago. It was genuinely inspiring, and I think we’re going to need lots of inspiration in the coming years. At least we won’t have to cringe with embarrassment every time our nation’s leader opens his mouth to speak. No one will “misunderestimate” Obama.

At the risk of being schmaltzy, this really only could happen in America and I feel a lot of pride in my country this morning for showing the world we have not forgotten our ideals.

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Kaz wins the “prize of marginal value” with the closest guess to Obama’s Electoral College total of 338. Kaz had the highest guess in the pack at 344. rsb was second at 319. jb was last, guessing McCain with 275. I’ll report later this week on the prize once I figure out what it is.

The Obamamercial

I watched the Obama infomercial last night and kind of enjoyed it. (It's up on the Obama site.) I doubt it changed any minds, but Ad Age didn’t name him "Marketer of the Year" for nothing. As any marketer knows, it’s nearly impossible to tell which thing you do is the one thing that really matters. You have to do lots of things and let the totality of your efforts carry the day.

The things he has done (or that have been done by others in support of him) online in the form of viral marketing and YouTube videos have been especially effective, but even those things take a back seat to his personal ability to communicate. These skills are going to be sorely needed, and tested, in the coming months.

But the main thing I thought as I watched last night was that the infomercial format is much more effective than the faux debates we suffered through. My proposal for 2012 is a series of dueling infomercials. Over a five week period each candidate would submit a series of weekly thirty-minute videos to various networks. Each video would deal with a different broad theme, e.g., health care, energy, foreign policy, etc. No other rules. The candidate can sit and speak to the camera, but would be free to include visual aids, charts, guests – whatever. If the candidate wanted to use part of the time to slam the competition it would be his call, but the more time doing that, the less time available for making that week’s case.

This time could be paid for through public financing. I think most networks would actually be happy to donate the time if they were permitted some flexibility on when the videos were broadcast.

The photo? Ron Popeil -- father of the infomercial. Here’s a link to the Ronco web site in case you are struck with a sudden urge to own a five-tray food dehydrator.

The calm before the storm

Is it just me, or does anyone else feel like they’ve finished nailing the plywood over the doors and windows, stocked the basement with canned goods and bottled water, and now there is nothing to do but sit and wait until the hurricane reaches shore?

The Dow opened down almost 500 points this morning. Yesterday Alan Greenspan repudiated 40 years of economic beliefs and all but predicted Depression II. “It ain’t over ‘til isn’t over,” but it seems likely Obama will win, which for him could end up being the ultimate example of being careful what you wish for because you just might get it. I’m already feeling sorry for the guy.

Where is all the money going to come from to fix everything? Health care, social security, Medicare, infrastructure, the wars, the existing national debt – the list is endless. And one thing I know is that raising the capital gains tax and getting rid of the Bush tax cuts for the better off among us isn’t even going to put a dent in this list. And all the above is before the promised Obama middle class tax cuts and relief for mortgage defaulters.

I could sure use some good news. At the moment I’d settle for a Buckeye win over Penn State tomorrow night – that’ll get me out of bed and back in the office Monday, al least.

I change my mind

I plan to vote for Barack Obama. Nothing I heard last night on the Joe the Plumber Show makes me think either candidate is likely to interject anything new into the conversation, so this seems like the time to make it official.

I believed everything I wrote in support of John McCain at the time I wrote it, and I still believe our country would be much better off today if he had beaten Bush in the 2000 primaries and gone on to win the Presidency -- but I think his time has passed.

I’ve been very disappointed that he did not move to the political middle and fight for the independent vote, which I thought he had a very good chance to win. Selecting Governor Palin was, for me, a complete deal breaker, and according to the polls, the same was true for millions of other Americans, which has to bring his judgment into question. I’ve also been put off by the anger that seems to eat at him.

But mine will not be an anti-McCain vote. I have reasons for selecting Obama, some of which are policy and logic-based, and some are just my personal instincts. (This might be a good time to say that I don’t consider myself anything other than an ordinary voter who happens to write a blog.) Here are my “fact based” reasons:

I am less fearful of Obama’s health care plan than of Senator McCain’s, which I think will take health care away from more people than it will help.

Obama is more likely to make a serious effort to develop alternative energy options, which is a crucial political act to free us from the tyranny of dependence on imported oil and the despots who control it.

Obama has shown a cool and steady demeanor through-out the primaries and the general election campaign that makes me feel he would not panic in difficult times. While I find him aloof and cold, perhaps it’s time to elect the candidate with whom it would be less fun to have a beer.

Obama is a greatly superior communicator, who writes and speaks in simple, declarative sentences; and he seems to understand the power of communicating well. We’re in for some challenging times over the next few years and the ability to communicate well in order to persuade and lead the public is going to be more important than ever.

It is also time to give the other half of America a chance at the helm. Millions of Americans feel they were cheated out of a victory in 2000 by the Electoral College, an antiquated and anti-democratic system that negated the popular vote. Nearly 80% of Americans are dissatisfied with Bush’s leadership, and the people who voted against him should have a chance to test their own man and his policies against the country’s challenges; otherwise, we risk making the wedge that divides us too great to ever bridge.

I’ve voted in nine Presidential elections and I’m 5-4 so far. But I regretted three of the five “winners” before his term was over, so I have some trepidation about making any pick. What if Obama turns out to be an old-fashion entitlement liberal who turns over the money-printing presses to Nancy Pilosi? I don’t think he will, but that would be a disaster from which we might never recover. On the other hand, the same could be true if a President McCain actually did “bomb, bomb Iran.” Who knows? In the end it is all a crap shoot. At some point you just have to roll the bones and hope you don’t crap out.

But finally, a part of me wants Obama to win just because I like the way it renews and confirms the essence of the American story. We elect a man of mixed race who rises from welfare, to Harvard, to the White House. He unites a divided country, puts people ahead of politics, ends the war, restores prosperity and discovers the secret to wringing unlimited energy from ragweed.

Only in America, my friends.

I deserve a major tax cut

I deserve a major tax cut for watching another one of those faux debates last night; another infomercial masquerading as a “town hall” meeting. The rules were set by the candidates, designed to protect them from themselves, and then they couldn’t stick with them.

What they should do is put the two of them on a stage with two chairs hooked up to electric wires (nothing lethal) leading to hand controls operated by a live studio audience of uncommitted voters who would crank up the amps when they hear an answer they don’t like. Booing, catcalls, and loud laughing would be encouraged.

In all seriousness I found both candidate’s understanding and sense of urgency about economic issues very much wanting. I hope they are just too timid to speak up and not actually that shallow.

That said, Senator Obama looks increasingly Presidential, while Senator McCain looks increasingly desperate. At least he didn’t go rhetorically postal last night, which might have ended the whole party.
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The Sarah Palin poll closed last night (look to the right). The turn out was modest but the results were pretty conclusive.

McCain and Obama talk to a tie

It’s late, so I’ll just make a couple of very broad observations to get the conversation started. I thought the debate was very close. I suspect that who you liked going in is the guy you liked 90 minutes later. That was probably good news for Obama since foreign policy is McCain’s strength.
Neither man seems to really know much about economics, and that portion of the debate was superficial, with both candidates playing it safe.

Once it moved to foreign policy they both gained confidence, and my overwhelming impression was that both men displayed sophisticated knowledge and had nuanced positions on all the major issues. Again, who you liked going in was probably the winner in your mind on these topics, but perhaps I’m wrong. Tell us what you think.

Call me Hamlet

Well I guess I’m just Hamlet, unsure and uncomfortable with my choices. I’ve already changed my mind a couple of times (in my mind if not in print), and I may switch a couple more times before November. This condition puts me in awe of the total confidence and certainty so many of you have for your man Obama.

At best, I’m at about the 60% level for McCain – down from higher levels, after the Palin pick and as the tone of his campaign degenerated, although I understand the political conditions that made him think they were necessary.

But you! You are impressively certain. No point conceded and no doubt shown. I sincerely hope that if I’m still writing this blog a year or two from now that you’ll all be saying, “I told you so,” as President Obama delivers on the vision you’re buying.

That said, I’m a little surprised at the amount of grief I’ve taken for daring to even raise the question of who is the better man for these times. (It came more in private emails than in blog comments, but they were stinging none-the-less.)

I ask these questions because Presidents tend to surprise us. It was the conservative, Texan, military man Eisenhower who sent the Army to Little Rock to integrate the schools. It was the liberal icon Kennedy who first sent troops to Viet Nam and who invaded Cuba. LBJ voted with the worst southern racists in the Senate for decades before pushing the most comprehensive civil rights laws ever through Congress. The communist-baiter Nixon opened relations with China. The liberal, master politician Clinton blew health care reform through political ham-handedness, and then made welfare reform the most notable achievement of his eight years in office. And anyone knowledgeable on the topics will tell you that the hated George W. Bush has done more than any other world leader to solve the crisis in Darfur and of AIDS in Africa.

So just eight years after we first elected a man with a political career too short to have generated a record that revealed much about him, it seems to me a worthwhile exercise to ask these questions about a man who walks but leaves few footprints.

OK but…

I asked and you answered. Thank you for your responses to the question of “why Barack?” which I read several times. They ranged over many issues, but especially leadership. We can continue to debate the candidates for another 45 days or so, but I’m bothered by a nagging question I just can’t resolve. Perhaps you can help me with it.

Right or wrong, when it comes to the world of work (and the Presidency is a job after all) I divide the leaders I’ve worked for into two groups: those who get things done and those who talk a good game. And I suspect we could all agree that there are a lot more of the latter than the former.

I just can’t shake this impression that Obama is a talker, not a doer. I don’t denigrate his role as a community organizer, but he himself has said he left the field for law school because he could not get anything important done. I don’t dismiss the value of being a law professor, or a published author either, but those are essentially solitary pursuits in which one talks (or writes) but bears no direct responsibility for results.

I start really questioning his record when he enters politics; the 130 “present” votes in the Illinois Senate trouble me, but more troubling is his role as a US Senator. Not one hearing of the Afghanistan subcommittee that he chairs? A country where we have 30,000 troops? I find that hard to understand. There are a bunch of emails floating around that list his legislative achievements, but I think we all know these lists are not meaningful. The Senate leadership in both parties dole out “co-sponsorship” credits to all so everyone can say they did something.

A man with Obama’s ambitions should have dared something bigger – an alternative energy bill, a healthcare reform act – something that demonstrates vision and daring. But he seems very undaring to me. Careful to a fault. More afraid to fail or disappoint than to challenge the powers that be.

I don’t want to run the guy down; I may vote for him in the end – it really depends on the debates. But this nagging feeling that the man is an articulate, ambitious, poser just will not leave me. What say the rest of you?