[quote=SK in CV]
Agreed. I see it more as a failure in leadership style than a failure in leadership. His style might have worked in a different time. Not now. He’s more concerned with making deals than with policy goals. But whether by ignorance or malevolence, it doesn’t matter. He’s failed.[/quote]

SK: From one old soldier to another, leadership matters and, in some instances, its the only thing between complete success and catastrophic failure (as we used to say in Rangers, “sometimes you gotta fake it till you make it” and its corollary: “Leadership is the ability to hide your panic from others”).

This is where someone like Hillary Clinton might’ve been a better choice, especially when facing an intractable and intransigent group like the GOP in Congress. Its also where her remark about that “3:00 am phone call” might have been eerily prescient. I don’t like the Clintons or their politics, but I respect Hillary’s ruthlessness and feel she would’ve probably made short work of a tired old party hack like Boehner.

The GOP smells blood in the water and, unless Obama decides to take the fight to them, he’s toast. What’s often omitted in political biographies about FDR and LBJ is that they were tough sons-a-bitches. Whether its FDR “welcoming their rage” or LBJ twisting arms and thumping heads to get legislation passed, they knew both the game and the stakes. Oppositional politics and dirty tricks are nothing new, and for Obama to cry foul exposes him as a naif in the company of wolves.

P.S. Congrats on your daughter and med school. That’s good stuff. And, self-deprecation aside, you do get credit for that. Kids don’t just fall out of bed and raise themselves.