Saturday, September 17, 2011

Bill of attainder - Updated II

Ron Suskind is a terrific journalist, and I trust the things he reports here, even if some of those quoted are now walking away from what they said to him. The picture he paints is exactly what PUMAs predicted -- including lack of leadership, misogyny and failure to understand the meaning of this moment in history. And the public verdict is now pretty well established.

We don't have to say, "We told you so." He told you so.

Update: A deeper dive into the book here. The money quote:
“'The administration’s domestic policy was fast becoming a debate society run by Larry Summers,' Ms. Suskind writes. 'Obama would sit on high, trying to judge if there was any shared ground between the competing debate teams that might coalesce into a policy.' Mr. Suskind asks whether this was 'a model for sound decision making, a crutch to delay, or avoid, the decisions only a president can make, or a recipe for producing half-measures — a pinch of this matched with a scoop of that — masquerading as solutions.'”

I would love every Obot who derided us for pointing out precisely these palpable leadership deficiencies... who claimed that even talking about "leadership qualities" was a strange, obsessive affectation... who claimed that the policies of Obama and Hillary Clinton were about the same... who told us he really did believe the same things she believed, because, look, it's there on his website... and who, btw, said it was simply deranged to claim that he was at least a garden-variety sexist and maybe worse, and insisted that it was neither representative nor important that his fratboy speechwriter could publicly deride Hillary Clinton in a borderline date-rape way (and that that didn't at least presage a hostile work environment for women)... I would love for every one of them to read Ron Suskind's book and then take a long, hard look in the mirror.

Update 2: More grist. Not ready at 3 am. Not ready in (or for) prime time.

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