'Present' and unaccounted forPresident Obama is displaying a stunning lack of leadership
Augusta Chronicle Editorial Staff
March 15, 2011
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In the best of times, a vacuum of leadership produces chaos and confusion.
These are not the best of times.
Unrest in the Mideast and Libya in particular; our national energy policy, as gasoline prices rise; the economy, as the recovery takes a snail's pace; and the current federal budget, which has still yet to be written -- all these issues and more cry out for leadership, and there is none.
The window for helping rebels in Libya overthrow strongman Moammar Gadhafi -- long a thorn in America's side -- seems to be closing, with Gadhafi forces turning the tide against the uprising. If he survives, history may look back on this episode as a show of American weakness, a Carter moment for Mr. Obama.
Our own policies seem to be in utter confusion: There was disagreement in officialdom even on whether an arms embargo on Libya pertained to the rebels.
On energy, as oil sources were in growing jeopardy -- prices have spiked even aside from the question of whether Saudi Arabia might sink into Libyan-style anarchy -- the president suggests tapping the nation's strategic oil reserve, but not untapped oil stores. In other words, spend your savings, but don't try to increase income.
Rather than focus all his efforts on the economy, the president now wants to overhaul the nation's education system via the No Child Left Behind Act. By all means, let's open another can of worms.
And on the federal budget, the president has almost nothing to say -- drawing rebuke even from Democrats on Capitol Hill, such as Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who lamented that "the most powerful person in these negotiations -- our president -- has failed to lead this debate or offer a serious proposal for spending and cuts that he would be willing to fight for."
Instead, Obama appointed as his point man on the budget Vice President Joe Biden -- who promptly left the country as the government operated on temporary "continuing resolutions."
"President Obama's Friday news conference," wrote Dan Balz in The Washington Post , "did little to advance U.S. policy on Libya or clarify the White House's position on resolving the budget impasse in Congress.
"For those hungering for bolder leadership in the effort to force Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi from power, the president had little new to offer ..."
Ever so kindly, Balz wrote that on the budget impasse, "Obama remained above the fray." There's a fine line between "above the fray" and "out to lunch." When Reagan did such things, the media lampooned him as intellectually bereft.
Consider the stunning lack of leadership in Obama's budget advice for Congress: "Both sides are going to have to sit down and compromise on prudent cuts somewhere between what the Republicans were seeking that's now been rejected and what the Democrats had agreed to that has also been rejected. It shouldn't be that complicated."
In other words: Hey, somebody should do something! It's as if the president were trying to broker peace in a far-off land rather than a budget compromise down the block.
Noting that in Illinois, state Sen. Barack Obama voted "present" 129 times, conservative writer Michael Barone concludes Mr. Obama is still voting present on major issues.
Even liberal writer Wendy Kaminer -- who's more concerned with Mr. Obama not being forceful enough with Republicans or nice enough to "non-citizen terror suspects" -- laments in The Atlantic that a penchant for compromise and bipartisanship "that might have made him a valuable senator, especially in ordinary times, have made him a disastrous president" in today's "bullying" political world.
As a candidate, he famously remarked that having an opinion on when life begins is "above my pay grade."
Alas, many more mundane items seem to be as well.
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