the New Obama

Received from a friend: Art Woodstone  A note on our contributor: Art Woodstone started his career 63  years ago writing sports for the first Newhouse paper, the Staten Island Advance and who progressed through Variety, the Sunday NY Daily News, the Herald-Tribune to BBC and, so help me, Helen Gurley Brown's Cosmopolitan with several other media outlets along the way.

May the Force protect us from my incisive brethren in  the  media. Read this typical lead paragraph reporting the President's new get-tough attitude: 'President Barack Obama bluntly [italics added] challenged Congress Monday to act immediately on his new jobs plan, brandishing a copy of the legislation in the Rose Garden and demanding: "No games, no politics, no delays."' What's wrong with that paragraph?   What's wrong with his speech last Thursday and his statements since?   What's wrong with Obama? What's wrong is that this very bright,  overly self-controlled man still cannot bring himself to openly identify his real foe.  It's not Congress, it's the Republicans in Congress. Does Obama think that by treating  the Democrats the same "tough" way  he treats the Republicans in Congress, he will  ingratiate himself with the right, softening them up so he can pass his jobs bill--or any other  important legislation? If so, he has a short memory.  He hasn't grasped what a blunt President needs to do to grind down an intractable,  belligerent foe. If he cannot grind them down, he can at least impress on voters that GOP intransigence and hostility are undermining   progress toward solving the nation's awesome problems.  The time for diplomacy  passed,  almost from the day Obama took office. That's key to understanding a man who has  missed countless opportunities  to speak bluntly. What is equally troubling to me personally is that so many reporters  chose a word like blunt to portray the new Obama when  bluntness means narrowing in on the source of a problem and naming it.  Instead, eager to find a new Obama [new make news], the press corps  deliberately redefined vagueness as bluntness.  In his speech, Obama was neither blunt nor candid.  His tone was harder; his repeated message of "now" theatrical.  But style should never be mistaken for bluntness. Where the is the new Obama? Despite help from a disingenuous press, I fear that when it comes time [if ever] to vote on a jobs bill,  the President will settle for scraps. His probable collapse should not be taken as  recognition of reality. I console myself with the thought that if it isn't Obama in 2012, it will be something worse.