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Bow-ow-ow:

Obama’s

Painful Missteps

by Camille Paglia

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April 8th, 2009

SALON.COM

Dear Camille,

In your column, you say,

“President Obama has been

ill-served by his

advisors and staff.”

The primary job requirement

of a good senior executive is

the ability to judge character

and ability,

in order to be able to select people

to whom responsibilities may be

safely delegated.

If these advisors and

staff are inadequate,

the responsibility for their failures

should be laid at the feet of the person

who was ultimately responsible for

their selection and placement.

Charles

Pennsylvania

You are absolutely correct!

The buck stops with

the top executive.

But we all know how little executive

experience Barack Obama has had.

.

He was elected for his

vision and his steady,

deliberative character,

not his résumé.

For better or worse,

Obama is learning as he goes —

and surely most fair-minded people

would grant him reasonable leeway

as he grows into the presidency,

one of the hardest jobs in the world.

.

At a certain point, however,

Obama will face an

inescapable administrative crux.

Arriving at the White House,

he understandably stayed in

his comfort zone by bringing old

friends and allies with him —

a team that had had a fabulous

success in devising the hard-as-nails

strategy that toppled the Clintons,

like crumbling colossi,

into yesterday’s news.

But these comrades may not

have the practical skills or broad

perspective to help Obama govern.

.

Like Shakespeare’s Prince Hal

ascending the throne,

Obama may have to steel his heart

and banish Falstaff and the whole

frat-house crew.

Obama’s staffing

problems are blatant —

from that bleating boy of a

treasury secretary to what appears

to be a total vacuum where a chief

of protocol should be.

There has been one

needless gaffe after another —

from the president’s tacky appearance

on a late-night comedy show to the

kitsch gifts given to the British

prime minister,

followed by the sweater-clad first

lady’s over-familiarity with the

queen and culminating in the

jaw-dropping spectacle of a president

of the United States bowing

to the king of Saudi Arabia.

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Why was protest about

the latter indignity confined

to conservatives?

The silence of the major

media was a disgrace.

But I attribute that embarrassing

incident not to Obama’s sinister

or naive appeasement of the

Muslim world but to a simple

if costly breakdown in basic

command of protocol.

Enough already!

These slips are worsening

the anti-Obama backlash,

which began with the administration’s

bungled handling of the grotesquely

swollen stimulus package.

.

Conservatives seem deliriously

drunk with their cartoon picture

of Obama,

to whom is glibly attributed

every pathology in the book.

Yes, there were ambiguities

about Obama’s birth certificate

that have never been

satisfactorily resolved.

And the embargo on Obama’s

educational records remains

troubling.

.

But I am still waiting for hard

evidence about the host of

other charges that are continually

being hammered against him —

from his alleged fidelity to the

crypto-tactics of Chicago leftist

Saul Alinsky to the questions

raised by right-wingers about

the production of Obama’s

two memoirs.

Out of respect for the presidency,

conservatives need to put up or

shut up about these issues.

.

I still strongly believe in Obama’s

promise as a world leader.

I was thrilled, for example,

by his call this week for

an end to nuclear weapons —

a goal that he frankly admitted

would not be attained

in his lifetime.

.

We have waited a long time

for an American president

who dreams big.

Yes, there are bitter cells of

fanatics everywhere who hate

America and want

a repeat of 9/11.

.

And yes,

there will always be petty

dictators who covet the bomb

and conspire to get it.

But the mass of people around

the world want to be inspired

to a higher good.

.

Whether the Obama presidency

succeeds or fails will depend

on his ability to sustain his

ideals in the face of the testing

crises that will inevitably erupt

in far-flung regions where ethnic

or religious strife has been

a way of life for thousands

of years.

And closer to home,

Obama will need to cut the

umbilical to his hometown posse,

whose inefficiency and poor

decision-making took the shine

off his honeymoon and brought

the dispirited Republicans

back from the dead.

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