Obama’s Endless Advisors

posted at 3:53 pm on January 27, 2010 by Howard Portnoy

For a guy so gifted that he was going to lead America to … well — the Promised Land, Barack Obama sure is making his base uncomfortable. Within hours of his first State of the Union Address, he is being deluged with a tsunami of advice from leftist pundits and politicians. It is though none of them trust him — and who can blame them if they don’t? Regardless of how much Democrats like to pretend that Obama has what it takes, the grim reality is that he has proven himself again and again to be untrustworthy. Largely, this is because he came to this toughest of jobs unproven and — it is becoming increasingly evident — unprepared for the challenges it poses. (To understand just how bad a president Obama is turning out to be, consider that for his entire first year his party control both houses of Congress, the Senate with a filibuster-proof super majority, and he still managed to screw up his signature domestic initiative.)

So what are the “brains” behind the scenes counseling The One to do? Here is a cross-section of the best advice the Democrats have to offer:

• Paul Begala is advising Obama to attack Republicans. (How Begala sees this as a new strategy is something you’d have to be Begala to understand, and I wouldn’t wish that even on Begala.)
• Jonathan Freedland of The Guardian offers up some advice on what Obama shouldn’t do. That is, he shouldn’t move back to the center. (Back to the center? Wouldn’t he have had to be at the center at one time in order to move back to it? And if so, when does Freedland imagine that was? Never mind. The opening sentence of his article — “Part of me hopes Barack Obama does not deliver yet another soaring, masterful speech for his maiden state of the ­union [emphasis added]” — answers that question.]
• Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic similarly has mixed emotions over whether Obama should knock us off our sofas without another brilliant speech (“the speech of his life,” Cohn calls it) or simply lower his ambitions going forward. My question is whether Cohn was in a coma or something until this morning. If not, how else could he possibly have missed Obama’s 419th speech of his life, which put half of the electorate to sleep? (The other half switched to M*A*S*H reruns.)
• Last but not least, Kevin Drum of Mother Jones advises the president to stay the course. He should double down on his efforts to pass health care reform legislation regardless of what the American public says or thinks. After all, what do those idiots know? Nothing, if you ask Joe Klein. They don’t even deserve the gift of ObamaCare on accounta they’re such ignoramuses. (It’s sort of amusing to attempt to reconcile Klein’s current contempt for the electorate’s lack of intelligence with his views on that topic around the time Obama was elected.)

What do I think Obama should do tonight? I think he should resign and let the American people figure out what to do with President Biden. Since that scneario is as likely as Obama’s accepting blame for the many mistakes he made, I think he should kick a surprise third-down punt and attempt to pin his opponents close to the goal line. Oh, I’m sorry: My mind was wandering. Reading so much liberal “wisdom” will do that to you.

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• Programming note: Hosting the Hugh Hewitt Show this week

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