November 15, 2010, Opposite of courage under fire
I'll defer to Krugman for this explanation of the President's various failures in the economics front which led inexorably to the mid-term election results, to wit, an electorate with no love for Republicans handing them control of the House of Representatives anyway, because the President sold them out on everything they hold dear economic recovery, both as a matter of style and as a matter of substance. And substance, especially.
Professor Krugman nicely weaves in Obama's bogus campaign themes that genuine hostility between the party of the richRepublicans and the other party of the rich, only less effective Democrats was strictly one of "process," and somehow, the guy who never had a real job in his freaking life before becoming President of the freaking United States "great conciliator" in the form of Barack Obama could get the feuding ill-tempered children and assorted industry-owned whores diametrically opposed political forces to shake hands and work together in a spirit of harmony.
"Bollocks," says I. And "fat chance" says Krugman, as just as Obama caved before the game even started, and began negotiating with himself to make the stimulus ineffective (and the health care reform not so reformy)... so it seems, he's doing it again, by handing the Republicans their wet dreams most cherished treasure, tax cuts for the rich, despite telling us for years that he would stand firm against them.
In watching a t.v. montage of the President in East Asia, I saw that in Japan, he attended a genuine kabuki show... one assumes he did so as a matter of professional development, as the kabuki seems to be the only coherent theme of governance he has (that, and capituation, which kind of sounds like kabuki).