Anyone who watched the Beltway public issues panel show “Around Washington” knows that there is no more loyal defender of Barack Obama than Colbert King. King is a Democrat and a card-carrying progressive, and also a Pulitzer Prize winner and career-long Ethics Hero, as he has doggedly and revealingly documented the corruption in all corners of the Washington. D.C. government. Colbert King, in short, is a truth-teller, and while his ideological leanings have often caused him to defend Obama when it would be more responsible not to, he has integrity. This weekend, in his weekly column for the Washington Post, he joined a chorus of conservative critics by expressing dismay that the President would choose this time to take a vacation on Martha’s Vineyard:
“Is there anyone in the White House with nerve enough to tell Barack Obama that Martha’s Vineyard is the last place on earth that the president of the United States should find himself next week? Don’t get me wrong. I don’t begrudge the chief executive a little time off from the Oval Office. But to be leaving town to spend 10 days luxuriating in an affluent, New England summer town when millions of Americans can’t find work? To fly off to the Vineyard when the public is losing faith in Washington’s ability to fix the nation’s economic problems, and with people anxious about their futures? What is he thinking?”
I can answer that, and in fact I have.
Like King, I have no problem with President’s taking as many vacations as they want. It’s a killing job. The partisan game of criticizing the other party’s presidents for playing golf or going to the ranch is silly. Sometimes, however, criticism is justified, as when President Bush lingered on his vacation in Texas while Katrina struck. Leaders cannot be perceived as being at leisure, even if they are not, during times of crisis. Bush got terrible advice in the wake of Katrina, and it was the tipping point for his entire presidency.
Obama is going on vacation because he has no leadership instincts whatsoever. He may be smart, he may be educated, but his leadership skills are minimal, and his learning curve is flat. Scant weeks after reprimanding Congress for going home while the FAA languished, and after years of rhetoric about how he “will not rest’ until various goals are accomplished, this President cannot recognize when the people he leads need reassurance that 1) their leaders give a damn 2) their government has some idea about what to do to fix the nation’s economic problems and 3) there is hope.
Colbert King sees the obvious disconnect between a suffering, frightened country and a Chief Executive frolicking in the surf. Yet Obama, and frighteningly, nobody with influence around him, does not. It is not the first time that the obvious demands of national leadership have eluded him. In fact, it is a theme of his Presidency.
I take no joy in this assessment, for many reasons. One is that the likely alternatives to Obama currently range from feckless to unhinged. Another is that America is almost always better off with strong Presidents than weak ones, regardless of their policies, as long as their character is sound. A third is that this country cannot afford another failed presidency. I disagree with Obama on many issues, but I want him to succeed. I want every President to succeed.
Facts are stubborn things, as John Adams said, and the fact is that the electorate, for good and understandable reasons, elected an untested young man with great campaigning skills who had shown no talent for leadership, and, as it turned out, possesses none. That is a tragedy for the country, but there is no virtue in denying it. Knowing enough not to take off to Martha’s Vineyard at this time was an easy test, and Obama couldn’t even pass that.
I know what that means, and so does Colbert King.
Ethics Alarms 
Obama is an elitist who conned Americans into believing that, like Clinton, he “could feel their pain.” And, that he could ease some of their pain. We are all learning — in excruciatingly frightening ways — that Obama doesn’t “feel our pain” at all. He feels only his own arrogance, power, and certainty that he really CAN “change our nation” into something better (or at least something different.)
Not a chance. More and more of us know now that glibness is NOT leadership. That NEVER taking responsibility for failed initiatives during one’s own administration is NOT leadership. Taking deceit to new heights is NOT leadership. That turning a promised “transparent” Administration into a secretive, controlling, and, let’s just admit it, lying group of political hacks is NOT leadership. That blaming everyone else for one’s own mistakes is NOT leadership. (E.g., being arrogant enough to still blame George Bush for the upper-income tax cuts — when they were due to expire in 2010 and Obama himself signed off on their extension???)
Having a president who “learns as he goes” might be tolerable. Having a president who thinks he knows everything but repeatedly proves how little he does know is INintolerable.
Lyndon Johnson was done in by the Viet Nam war — a war he didn’t start and couldn’t finish. People should listen sometime to the NPR tapes of Johnson’s conversations about that war — his anguish, his taking of total responsibility for failed initiatives, for his genuine and heartfelt concern for what he called “our boys” over there. I believe that eventually history will absolve Johnson and see him for the leader he really was. The Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 would NEVER had been passed without the leadership of Lyndon Johnson, who went to the Hill and twisted arms, changed minds, and made sure these two watershed pieces of legislation were passed, because they were crucial to the country. He used up a lot of political capital to do it, but he did it because it was right. THAT was leadership, and Obama could take a lesson from Lyndon Johnson. He won’t, of course, because he’s too much of a snob to take lessons from anyone, much less a Texas hick who inherited the Presidency because of a national tragedy. And that attitude on Obama’s part, among many other things, is a different kind of tragedy.
I’ve said it before: “Celebrity-in-Chief”.
This is just one more example of the President’s actions indicating a greater desire to live the life than to do the job.
–Dwayne
Agree completely. Like the “Celebrity-in-Chief” term very much. I’ll use it myself if you don’t mind.
My theory: he really doesn’t know the difference, or how to distinguish them. Is that better or worse?
Just to make the point that some arguably intelligent people disagree heartily with all that’s been written above. Not to refute each point, but since when did Colbert King possess such definitive wisdom?
I suggest you go to Martha’s Vineyard for a week and cool off. It’s a pleasant place, not elitist at all–the only resort I’ve been to that’s popular with the African-American community.
As for me, I think some time in MV will be good for a hard working high pressure leader.
Amen.