President
Barack Obama is starting to look like the second coming of
Jimmy Carter. If he’s going to avoid that fate, the president had better take radical action -- and fast.
That means doing more than offering belated talk about
jobs, or waging ineffectual on-again, off-again bank warfare. What, after all, is the point of bashing Wall Street only to then blow bonus kisses to
JPMorgan Chase & Co. chief
Jamie Dimon and
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. head
Lloyd Blankfein?
Obama needs to ditch his professorial, community-organizer mien and start cracking some heads. Unless, that is, he is intent on paving the way for a
Palin presidency in 2013.
Supporters are crying out for Obama to pull out of his tailspin. In an article in Politico,
Douglas Wilder, the nation’s first African-American governor and an early Obama supporter,
urged the president to get his act together.
“The need is becoming more obvious by the day,” Wilder wrote. “Getting elected and getting things done for the people are two different jobs.”
Obama’s lack of resolve even makes comparisons to Carter seem charitable. Financial blogger Eric Salzman argued that we haven’t seen such a lack of leadership “in the White House since our 15th president,
James Buchanan, stood by and let the country dissolve into Civil War while trying to appease everyone.”
What’s to be done? Here are
three ways for Obama to man up, chart a new course and avert the kind of debacle that tarnished his party in the eyes of a generation of voters.
