"Change" now and "Hope" for the best

Duffy has been watching our new president for nine months now and even though he still wonders "how did this guy get elected president?" nevertheless he is our president until 2012 or longer. So, a few comments: First of all, Duffy personally likes Obama. He knows how to give a speech. He is smart. He is charismatic and has supreme self-confidence. He has a beautiful wife and two lovely children. He appears to be devoted to his family and seems to be a an upright guy. He is not an narcissist like the last Democratic president, who was in Duffy's opinion, a sociopathic liar and a all around sleazebag. That said however:

Obama ran as the "Not Bush". Duffy didn't vote for Obama but he wasn't terribly upset when he won. Maybe a new face, new change was in order after eight years of the Republicans. Duffy suspects that Obama and the Democrats think they were elected to make sweeping changes while in fact, the people just wanted Bush out of there! After McCain torpedoed any chance of winning by picking Sarah Palin, the Democrats probably could have run a kumquat for president and won. A lot of people liked Obama. They liked Bush less. And McCain took himself out of the running with his pick of Palin and the collapsing economy.

Duffy still believes this country is fundamentally right of center and conservative. Obama made a big mistake right out of the box by deferring his entire legislative package to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Pelosi is the most left-wing ultra liberal partisan Speaker of the House in history and Reid is a political hack owned by the unions and not respected by anybody. Obama's experience, such as it is, consisted on less than three years as a U.S. Senator where his legislative accomplishments consisted of....nothing. The man really is still a neophyte to Washington. Only now does he realize that he needs to get personally involved in the legislative process. Duffy thinks that most of Congress, including most of the Senate and many in the House, including not a few Democrats, have no fear of Obama. He is not a head-cracker like Lyndon Johnson. Obama fundamentally doesn't appear to want to get into the middle of the process and "get dirty". Duffy doubts if Obama ever played football or rugby.

Obama needs to quit apologizing whenever he makes a trip overseas. The U.S. has little to apologize for and the American people are getting tired of it. Obama's "new openness" in foreign policy is in Duffy's opinion naive at best and silly at worse. The dictators and bad guys don't care if Obama is "open" with them or not. They take it as a sign of weakness and no amount of talking to Iran, North Korea or even Israel is going to change their ways. Words followed by action is a lot more effective than words and then more words. Hilary Clinton is probably the "toughest" person in the administration and Duffy suspects that most foreign governments don't respect her very much either. Talking and talking will buy you some time but won't change any minds. Obama's self-importance and belief in his own ability isn't going to get him far in foreign affairs.

Duffy has noticed that Obama is somewhat thin skinned. He doesn't take criticism easily and seems to overreact to perceived push backs from people who aren't impressed with his arguments. This could be a self-damaging flaw that manifests itself later in his administration. Moreover, Obama needs to realize that if something he says in Peoria is the opposite of what he said in Portland the day before, the press and public are going to call him on it.

In spite of all his flaws Duffy thinks there may be hope for Mr. Obama the rest of his administration. A few things he needs to do: 1) Tell Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid that he is calling the shots from now on with legislation. 2) Enough of Bush bashing. Obama is president now and the people don't want to hear anymore about "fixing Bush's problems". 3) Tell the truth. A tax is a tax, not a "fee". The people know the difference. 4) Obama doesn't need to give a speech every day. Be on every talk show. Be on Letterman. That only demeans the office of the presidency and after a while people start tuning you out. 5) Quit apologizing every time you go over seas. Enough is enough and most people don't like their president apologizing to tinpot dictators. 6) Make decisions. Grow a backbone. Be a president, not just act like one. 7) Make a decision about Afghanistan and stick with it. Indecision and ineptness about Vietnam ruined Lyndon Johnson. 8) Fix the economy first. Health care and the environment can wait. Take some time and work with the Republicans to get it right. Finally, 9) A lot of the people elected you because they were sick of Bush, not because they especially liked you. You need to understand that the U.S. is still a conservative country. Even though Clinton was a scumbag he was smart enough to switch back to a middle of the road legislative program and did work with Republicans to get things done to get reelected. Duffy hates to say this, but be more like Clinton and less like Pelosi and you may get something accomplished in the next three years.