You know it’s Bizarro World in DC — OK, even more so than it usually is — when Tina Brown starts making sense:
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Tina, what has happened to this president, the president from hope and change? What has happened?
TINA BROWN: Well it’s so interesting. I think that Obama doesn’t like his job, actually. I think that he is genuinely of a professioral disposition in the sense that I think that he’s interested in chewing over the pros and cons, and he doesn’t like, he doesn’t like power and he doesn’t know how to exercise power. And I think knowing how to exercise power is absolutely crucial. He doesn’t understand how to underpin his ideas with the political gritty, granular business of getting it done. And that kind of gap has just widened and widened and widened. And so that every time there is a moment, a window where he can jump in, like something like a Simpson-Bowles as well, he just doesn’t do it. He hangs back at crucial moments when you have to dive through that window.
AdvertisementSCARBOROUGH: And regardless of your ideology, it is very safe to say, I think most people would agree: LBJ he is not, Bill Clinton, he is not, when it just comes to understanding how to make Washington work.
MIKE BARNICLE: It appears off of what Tina just said, you just said, it appears that you could make a case that Barack Obama doesn’t like politics.
BROWN: Right. I absolutely feel that.
And since in the past, the White House thought nothing of emailing the Scarborough show, and the hosts would read the White House’s correction on the air…
…we can safely assume that President Obama — or at least his staffers — concur with their opinion.
At least tacitly.
Related: When you’ve lost Tina Brown…you’ve lost hundreds of thousands of unsold issues of Newsweek at the Safeway checkout. But still.
Tina Brown and Joe Scarborough? Are these the leading minds of the day? Sheesh. How far we’ve fallen.
“Are these the leading minds of the day? Sheesh.”
They’re not. But it’s fun to watch the lights come on amongst a person (Brown) and two institutions (Newsweek and MSNBC-GE) who were deeply in the tank for Obama in 2008.
Obama doesn’t want the job of president as it is today. He was sold a bill of goods by Axelrod and the other Democrats that once elected, all he would have to do is go out and say “Let their be health care!” and Harry, Nancy and the others would go out and pass a health care plan, bring it to Obama, he would sign it and then receive the huzzahs of a grateful nation. And those who weren’t grateful would be demonized as racists and marginalized from the political debate.
That was how it was supposed to work, because in all of Obama’s adult political life, that’s how it always had worked — he lends his non-threatening style to the progressive movement, they use his historical position to destroy his and their enemies and get their bills passed, and then they give him the credit so he can be praised even more to prepare for the next great activist liberal measure. The tea party movement blew up the plan, and while the Democrats have done a good job in demonizing the movement in general, the swing voters haven’t gravitated back to the president, because they actually want to see Obama do something about the economy, jobs and bloated federal spending. He doesn’t want to do anything about the latter, and he never took the job to work hard to do anything about the former, which is why liberal pundits like Tina and Jon are so frustrated today.
Pretty much nailed it John. Now how do I get a job playing golf that pays 400k no matter how well I score?
From very early in his presidency it was clear to me;
Barack Obama desperately wants to BE President of the United States!
However,
Barack Obama clearly Does NOT want to DO President of the United States!