President Obama's speech tonight was a stultifying mix of banalities and cliches -- offering an attempt at synthetic uplift to what he apparently believes is a nation of children.
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Quite frankly, we have a President for whom the job is too big. He can come up with "big picture" legislation to promote a hard core left agenda, he can talk (and talk, and talk), he can convene endless panels, and he can bully oil companies.
What he lacks, though, are two qualities indispensable in a Chief Executive: First, a little modesty (would it have killed him to admit that he, like the rest of us, was caught unawares by the gravity of this situation?). Second, he just can't seem to do anything. And the problem is that's what a President is supposed to do. Something -- besides talk.
He has more power than anyone in the world. He could have used it to waive the Jones Act quickly (though it would upset the unions), or to order barrier walls to be built to guard the Louisiana shore (now, Gov. Jindal has done the latter -- at least someone's acting like a Chief Executive around here!).
But he's got no experience in acting . . . just in talking, visioning, and legislating. In other words, we've got a Chief Executive who's not . . . an executive.
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