Thomas Friedman was outlining the difficulty in combating international issues in today's column. He basically agreed with that Obama's efforts that are trying to control the cost the U.S. bears in combatting situations that are fundamentally out of any possible control by the U.S.
He went to bemoan the fact that our foreign policy is frozen in time by 9/11 and our national trauma that has created an all consuming fear of terrorism. He pointed out that in any one year more people in the U.S. are killed by each of the following than by Jihadist Terrror in the U.S.: (i) accidents with dear, (ii) teenagers with guns, and (iii) black male youth by police. Yet, there is no lasting national outcry for controlling dear, guns, or establishing better relations between African-American youth and Police Departments. Yet, our foreign policy is dictated by Osama bin Laden, even though he is dead now.
Friedman wondered why Obama did not explain his foreign policy vision better. I am wondering why he and the Democrats did not explain the benefits of the Affordable Health Care Act better. Substantial majorities of the population support key aspects of Obama/Romney/Heritage FoundationCare. And I am wondering why they didn't explain the benefits of a higher minimum wage for everyone in the economy. And I am wondering how the immigrant community can call him the Deporter in Chief while the Tea Party is mad as hell that he is not deporting enough undocumented people.
For such a great communicator in his campaigns, President Obama is a poor communicator as President. That will probably be the greatest negative mark about his Presidency when history gets around to reviewing it objectively.
Either Obama has lost his super-human communication skills or he never had them. Perhaps all he ever had was good "speech reading" skills.
ReplyDelete