{"id":5538,"date":"2010-06-02T19:25:24","date_gmt":"2010-06-02T23:25:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=5538"},"modified":"2010-06-02T19:25:24","modified_gmt":"2010-06-02T23:25:24","slug":"the-tides-are-turning-on-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/5538\/the-tides-are-turning-on-obama\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tides Are Turning on Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ordinarily, <em>New York Times<\/em> columnist Maureen Dowd <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/05\/30\/opinion\/30dowd.html \" target=\"_blank\">refers to President Obama as Spock<\/a>, as in the <em>Star Trek<\/em> Vulcan who lacked emotion.\u00a0 Today, she passes on that appellation, but describes the same manner of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/06\/02\/opinion\/02dowd.html?ref=opinion \" target=\"_blank\">dispassion<\/a> that \u2013 if it continues \u2013 will likely prove to be the main reason this president serves only one term.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The oil won\u2019t stop flowing, but the magic has.<\/p>\n<p>Barack Obama is a guy who is accustomed to having stuff go right for him. He\u2019s gotten a lot of breaks: two opponents in his U.S. Senate race in Illinois felled by personal scandals; a mismanaged presidential campaign by Hillary Clinton; an economic collapse that set the stage for a historic win, memorably described by the satiric Onion newspaper as \u201cBlack Man Given Nation\u2019s Worst Job.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Welcome to the big chair.\u00a0 The frustration this president is supposedly feeling isn\u2019t any different than a business owner dreaming of growth, but stifled by new regulations; or the family man trying to meet his responsibilities while attempting to make a profitable career transition.\u00a0 There are two sides to the leadership coin: maintaining a vision, and overcoming obstacles to it.\u00a0 Unlike a predecessor of his, Obama has \u201cthe vision thing.\u201d\u00a0 Too bad for the Gulf Coast, American economy, and Iranian democracy advocates that their problems are interpreted as annoyances to be minimized rather than challenges to be overcome.<\/p>\n<p>How strange it is to watch a president lauded for his rhetorical prowess appear absolutely powerless to summon the will to roll up his sleeves and take charge of any crisis that occurs outside Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ordinarily, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd refers to President Obama as Spock, as in the Star Trek Vulcan who lacked emotion.\u00a0 Today, she passes on that appellation, but describes the same manner of dispassion that \u2013 if it continues \u2013 will likely prove to be the main reason this president serves only one term. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[143,1320,1341,1344,1342,1343],"class_list":["post-5538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-barack-obama","tag-gulf-oil-spill","tag-maureen-dowd","tag-spock","tag-star-trek","tag-vulcan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5538"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5544,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5538\/revisions\/5544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}