Establishment Starts to Turn on Obama | Newsweek Voices - Howard Fineman | Newsweek.com

Image by BL1961 via Flickr

By Howard Fineman | Newsweek Web Exclusive

Mar 10, 2009 | Updated: 8:37  a.m. ET Mar 10, 2009

Surfer that he is, President Obama should know a riptide when he's in one. The center usually is the safest, most productive place in politics, but perhaps not now, not in a once-in-a-century economic crisis.
Swimming in the middle, he's denounced as a socialist by conservatives, criticized as a polite accommodator by government-is-the-answer liberals, and, increasingly, dismissed as being in over his head by technocrats.
Luckily for Obama, the public still likes and trusts him, at least judging by the latest polls, including NEWSWEEK's.But, in ways both large and small, what's left of the American Establishment is taking his measure and, with surprising swiftness, they are finding him lack-ing.
They have some reasons to be concerned. I trace them to a central trait of the president's character: he's not really an in-your-face guy. By recent standards—and that includes Bill Clinton as well as George Bush—Obama for the most part is seeking to govern from the left, looking to solidify and rely on his own party more than woo Republicans. And yet he is by temperament judicious, even judicial. He'd have made a fine judge. But we don't need a judge. We need a blunt-spoken coach.

Read the full article here.....

Related articles by Zemanta

• Obama's Market (professorbainbridge.com)