A Leadership Shortage: His policies are fine. But the President is often a prisoner of his instincts

摘要

On the first monday in october, Kasie Hunt of NBC asked U.S. Senator Mark Pryor, an Arkansas Democrat, what his feelings were about President Obama's response to the Ebola threat. He said, and I quote, "Ahhh-uhhhhhhhhhm," followed by two minutes of gobbledygook. Two days later, Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senator from Kentucky, was asked who she voted for in 2008 and 2012. Her answer was similarly excruciating, and foolish. She cited the privacy of the ballot box. And about the same time, former-nearly-everything Leon Panetta landed a hammer blow on his old boss: "He [Obama] approaches things like a law professor in presenting a logic of his position... My experience in Washington is that logic alone doesn't work. Once you lay out a position, you are going to roll up your sleeves and you have to fight to get it done... In order for Presidents to succeed, they cannot just-when they run into problems-step back and give up."