Cross-posted on Horse Head Soup:
I never thought I'd say this. But God help me, I think President Obama needs to be a little bit more like George W. Bush.
Just hear me out.
A president needs to have a clear vision of where he wants to take the country. And he must be able to express that vision clearly, communicate it effectively, and pursue it with determination.
George W. Bush, for all his many faults, took the role of "leader" seriously. He certainly had a vision of where he wanted to take America. Most of us here were vehemently opposed to that vision, to be sure. I know I was. But the point is that he had it. And he pursued it with a single-mindedness that at times seemed to border on insanity.
President Obama is in many ways the anti-Bush. After eight years of Dubya's swagger and bravado, his reasoned and measured approach seemed refreshing. The problem for the president is that the American public wants it all. We want a president to be confident and commanding, but not arrogant and micro-managing. We want him to be calm and self-composed, but not cold and disconnected. We want him to be wise and well-spoken, but not pedantic and abstruse. We want him, in short, to be the perfect leader.
Someone recently described President Obama as being very "process oriented." I think this is an apt descriptor. He seems very focused on consensus building, on making sure that everyone is heard. That's not a bad quality in and of itself, and it's a far cry from George Bush's solitary "decider" act. But I think Obama takes it too far. For the most part, he has failed to communicate a clear vision, short of the abstract concept of "bringing people together."
George Bush once famously said, "I'm a leader. A leader leads." At the time that statement made me wince. But now I think my knee-jerk reaction to the simpleminded nature of the analysis may have blinded me to its underlying truth. The American people don't want a facilitator-in-chief, they want a leader. If Barack Obama hopes to salvage his presidency -- and I believe he can -- he needs to decide what he wants the next two years to be about. He needs to decide where he wants to go, and how he is going to get there. He needs, in short, to be a little -- just a little -- more like his predecessor.
Only maybe without the fake Texas accent.