It is actually a very good and insightful column, for once surprisingly. I usually find Dowd's columns scattershot and her criticisms misguided.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Key passage from Dowd after implying we elected the wrong guy for these times:
Ed Liddy was put in charge of an essentially bankrupt company, but he never drove a hard bargain on bonuses or counterparty debts. He honored contracts made by an organization that had become a fraudulent scheme. He could have told the leeches inside the company and out that the world had utterly changed, so the contracts would too — as Michelle would say, "whether they like it or not."
Why exactly is it that Obama continually have to say aloud that he is the president and he'll "take responsibility" (he's done so at least 5x this last week). He did his recent townhalls in a very haphazard way (i thought he was supposed to be selling his budget and if he was, i didn't really notice), and he went on Leno as if he's still a candidate. He completely relinquishes all the economic duties to the Senate and House. He's said all the right words but never follows through.
I am reminded of Andrew Sullivan's article describing Obama as "The Presider" thinking at the time that Obama's style of governance was a welcome change from Bush "the decider", however after this week, i am reminded of how right before the Pennsylvania primary Obama clung to Reverend Wright but dumped him at the very last minute and for utterly unconvincing reasons (what changed except Wright repeating his offensive words?), in the face of immediate political disaster during a razor thin margins against Hillary, as well as the dumping of Tom Daschle after he originally said he would have kept him with the tax problems (again, what changed except the PR disaster?), and I am also reminded of the David Brooks article "Where's the Landslide" (and I'm no fan of David Brooks) where he describes Obama as a "sojourner" who refuses to stick around to finish the job he was there to do, and also "Creation Myth" by The New Republic's John B. Judis where Judis describes why Obama quit community organizing after only 3 years and became disillusioned with Saul Alinsky's philosophies.
Notice how Michelle Obama always brought up on the campaign trail the fact that Barack Obama always talked about the "world as it is" and "the world as it should be" While Saul Alinsky turned an intense focus on the "world as it is", and Obama shows in from Dreams From My Father how he abandoned Alinsky's ideas and instead focused on "the world as it should be".
He says let's look to the future on DOJ scandals, obvious war crimes, obvious other crimes. He said the exact same thing about the banking scandals on Leno this week. Look to the future, not to the past. The two are not mutually exclusive and require each other. At this rate, will any of his visionary budget initiatives pass without him getting his hands dirty while Rahm is put out to suffer the wrath of his former colleagues? And his administration is trying to point fingers at the Fed and Senator Dodd for the AIG bonuses when it was clearly in their own purview and they had several opportunities but missed them all. He can't even control the message on a 3% tax increase on the richest 1.2% when the a majority of country is in the mood to pick up their pitchforks and torches against these people???
Even when Leno joked that Obama was dumping all the responsibility on Geithner and leaving him alone, I felt a tad sorry for Geithner (though he is the problem in all this), Obama looked quite defensive saying:
JAY LENO: I mean, when he came in you probably said, hey, this is not a problem. Now, it's, hey, you got this, you got that, hey, good luck! (Laughter.)
THE PRESIDENT: No, no, but this is the point that I made, I think two days ago, when somebody asked, well, do you have confidence in Tim Geithner. I said, look, I'm the President, so ultimately all this stuff is my responsibility. If I'm not giving him the tools that he needs to make sure that we're moving things forward, then people need to look at me.
Well, he's not giving him the tools. He staffed the the Treasury with Citibank and Goldman Sachs lobbyists so far, and the major positions in Treasury have yet to be filled!
After Obama's victory, many have said Democrats were damn lucky not to have had John Kerry elected in 2004 saying that this recession would have killed the credibility of the progressive movement for a very long time. Maybe we should have waited a little longer to elect a Democrat. I've made every excuse to myself for his actions along the way, but seeing a pattern emerging, it's hard to swallow any more rationalizations. Obama really is all talk, no action. Caution may have proved to get him a few point lead in the election results, but it is going to destroy his presidency.