Time For Some Rocky

Maureen Dowd makes makes the case for some sassy anger from Obama:

After keeping his great powers of persuasion and elucidation under wraps
all summer, the president at long last comes forward to explain his health care
plan to an utterly confused and increasingly skeptical and wary public.
He
should have done this speech back in June and conjured up a better glossary. You
can’t combat a scintillating term like “death panels” with a somnambulant one
like “public option.”

President Obama is so wrapped up in his desire to be a different, more
conciliatory, beer-summit kind of leader, he ignores some
verities.
Sometimes, when you’ve got the mojo, you have to keep your foot on
your opponent’s neck. When you’re trying to get a Sisyphean agenda passed, it’s
good if people in the way — including rebellious elements in your own party —
fear you.

Civil discourse is fine, but when the other side is fighting dirty, you
should get angry. Don’t let the bully kick sand in your face. The White House
should have impaled death panel malarkey as soon as it came up.

By the time the president got feisty in a speech on Monday, the inmates
had taken over cable TV, much like the spooky spirits swarming up over Bald
Mountain in “Fantasia.”

Even Steve Hildebrand, the strategist who helped shape Obama’s historic win
in the Iowa caucuses, complains that his former hero “needs to be more bold in
his leadership.” Disenchanted at Obama’s disengaged approach on health care and
gay rights, Hildebrand told Politico’s Ben Smith that he was “losing patience.”