Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER ON OBAMA AS A DECISIVE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF

Krauthammer offers brilliant commentary on what he calls our "Unserious Command-in-Chief."

THE BY-STANDER IN CHIEF

To write the following is painful.  But as Ed Morrissey says (below), we shouldn't be surprised when inexperience leads to incompetence.

Peggy Noonan - "He was supposed to be competent: The spill is a disaster for the President and his political philosophy  

I don't see how the president's position and popularity can survive the oil spill. This is his third political disaster in his first 18 months in office. . .  The president, in my view, continues to govern in a way that suggests he is chronically detached from the central and immediate concerns of his countrymen. . .  The heart of the country is thinking each day about A, B and C, and he is thinking about X, Y and Z. They're in one reality, he's in another.

Ed Morrissey piggy-backs on Peggy Noonan's piece with his own reflections, "Where is the competence?"

In other words, the President has been voting “present” for most of the first five weeks of the disaster.  It’s not as if it’s the first time Obama tried to avoid responsibility for an issue or refuse to show leadership.  Many of us wrote extensively about Obama’s pattern of avoidance during the election — and suggested that Democrats try Obama in a lesser executive position first, such as Governor of Illinois, before nominating him for the top spot, in order to make sure he was up for the job.  [Me:  A stint as governor would have made sense!]

On Obama's complete inexperience and pattern of avoidance, Morrissey says,

One can do that [absent oneself, or vote "present"] as a legislator with few ill effects, because in the end others will choose to lead.  When that person assumes the top executive job, especially without any experience and seasoning for the job, things fall apart when disaster strikes as they have here.  Only those who willingly allowed themselves to be enchanted by charisma and public relations could possibly act surprised when inexperience leads to incompetence. . .

We need strong leadership, especially in times of crisis, not a man who prefers to vote present rather than lead.  And we probably wouldn’t have elected Obama or even nominated him this time around if the national media had done half of the job vetting Obama that they did with Sarah Palin, an atrocious failure documented best by John Ziegler in his film Media Malpractice.

Psalm 23 - Exposition by Dr. Daniel Block

I have often wondered about various images found in Psalm 23.  Dr. Daniel Block, Professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College, opens up Psalm 23 in a magnificent way, using the psalm as a meditation on leadership.  He offer his exposition in a talk he gave on April 4, 2007.