November 25, 2009

        Is the President slipping?  Well, there are some signs.  He's down some in the polls from, say, last summer.  And the columnists are starting to criticize.      Roger Cohen, in the New York Times, quotes Henry Kissinger:  "He reminds me of a chess grandmaster who's played his opening in six simultaneous games.  But he hasn't completed a single game and I'd like to see him finish one."  Cohen himself adds, "...can this probing, intelligent president close anything?"   That's a good question;  one I can't answer.      Maureen Dowd, also in the Times, blasts him for firing White House counsel Greg Craig, an old Clinton pal who'd worked for Obama, not Hillary, in the campaign.  She says it "sent a chill through some Obama supporters" and notes that Elizabeth Drew in Politico called it "the shabbiest episode of his presidency."       I don't know what led to Craig's dismissal, but I do share the feeling that while President Obama is smart and thoughtful, he does seem to have trouble getting things done.  He doesn't have much experience managing things.  Neither, of course, did John Kennedy, whose brief presidency began with a disaster, the Bay of Pigs, but went on to a triumph, the Cuban missile crisis.      Maybe it's just too early for report cards.  Could we wait until the end of his second year?
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