I ran across this piece in Foreign policy magazine while doing research for another item. David Rothkopf writes a very fascinating article that makes three clear points we need to remember:
- the issues of this nation President Obama is facing were a decade or more in creation.
- President Obama has had an unusual record of success in a relatively short time in office, successes his predecessors did not have..
- The Democratic Party is not embracing their successes; they are not attacking on the issues and seem to be distancing themselves from the administration. I feel this is the result of the President’s race.
I will agree that the President and the administration must demand the support and discipline of the Democratic Party. Every President has made that demand of their party, so his demands would not be new or a precedent. Hopefully, the appointment of Peter Rouse as interim chief of staff may stop some of the public displays of dissent in the President’s party.
Ultimately, being the President of the United States is challenging enough. Being the first minority President of the United States has exacerbated negative, divisive, inaccurate, imbalanced, and discriminatory hyperbole into a high art form. President Obama does not have a glass jaw however, instead of being using strategy and tactics all the time I would sometimes like to see him throw a right hand at his detractors like Mike Tyson did to Michael Spinks in 1988 (not literally, but figuratively). This offensive action may “brush back” some of the gross inaccuracies that some people ignorantly believe and some members of the press reports.