Once More, With Feeling

Sorry, Maureen Dowd, I don’t want the President to be my daddy!  I don’t want some creepy, needy, manipulative megalomaniac like Bill Clinton to “feel my pain”.  That’s not his job.   I want Obama to THINK, HONESTLY, about what our society needs to move us forward and to use his limited stack of chips and the limited power of government to do so.

I voted for him precisely because he seemed so thoughtful and because he didn’t seem likely to pander to us or get caught up in our anger.  When I see him channeling people like Al Franken or Frank Rich, it makes me cringe because that isn’t him.  “Get mad and smite those nasty corporations” isn’t his job. 

This is a fiendishly complex $14 trillion economy.  The President doesn’t run that economy or our society.  He can’t fix everything that’s wrong with us and it’s an invitation to totalitarianism to ask him to try.

That massive gusher at the bottom of the sea poses a hellish technical problem.  It isn’t government’s job to know what to do, but to help manage the damage it causes to peoples’ lives.