No One Said It'd Be Easy

Jonathan Martin points out that Obama is catching from the Times's liberals. Meh, most of these guys were always lukewarm to him. Except Frank Rich, who offered the following on Sunday:

Within 24 hours, Summers's stand was discarded by Obama, who tardily (and impotently) vowed to "pursue every single legal avenue" to block the bonuses. The question is not just why the White House was the last to learn about bonuses that Democratic congressmen had sought hearings about back in December, but why it was so slow to realize that the public's anger couldn't be sated by Summers's legalese or by constant reiteration of the word outrage. By the time Obama acted, even the G.O.P. leader Mitch McConnell was ahead of him in full (if hypocritical) fulmination.

David Axelrod tried to rationalize the lagging response when he told The Washington Post last week that "people are not sitting around their kitchen tables thinking about A.I.G.," but are instead "thinking about their own jobs." While that's technically true, it misses the point. Of course most Americans don't know how A.I.G. brought the world's financial system to near-ruin or what credit-default swaps are. They may not even know what A.I.G. stands for. But Americans do make the connection between their fears about their own jobs and their broad understanding of the A.I.G. debacle.

I think this is pretty much right. Obama is, temperamentally, a deliberative, thoughtful guy. It's why I voted for him. Unfortunately that quality doesn't exactly lead you to outrage, when the public is demanding it. Maybe that's for the best. I don't know. What he most needs now, is to be right about the economy. I'm a laymen, but it's not clear to me that he is.