AUSTIN BAY: America’s Strategic Leadership Deficit.

The 3 a.m. crisis phone call Hillary Clinton featured in a brilliant, now iconic campaign ad targeted Candidate Obama’s lack of prior executive experience — a not-so-subtle attack on Obama’s lack of development as a leader. In the 2008 general election, Republicans repeated Clinton’s argument.

At the time, a majority of American voters decided Obama’s developmental deficiency did not matter. Hope and change polemics, with the aid of teleprompters, Hollywood stagecraft and major media cheerleading, camouflaged Obama’s weakness.

Crisis has exposed his weakness, and it matters. Consider an indicative anecdote. During critical budget discussions at the White House involving House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, President Obama left the room with this parting shot: “Don’t call my bluff, Eric.” Obama meant to say “I’m not bluffing,” but angry and defensive, he muffed it. Subsequent events demonstrate Obama was bluffing, so his emotional reaction telegraphed his political strategy. . . .

What leadership skills Obama possesses he honed as a community organizer, slang for a political leader mobilizing a neighborhood to attack real and perceived injustices perpetuated by the larger community. This is an us-versus-them gambit where the organizer relies on rhetorical skills and media magnification to spread a message of blame. Mobilization using wedge issues differs from community-building — that requires a leader who bridges differences and unites in order to achieve.

Not seeing so much of that.