President Obama could take some lessons from Lucy Flowers. That's because, while he has the cajoling part down relatively well, he's pretty weak on the coercing, and is congenitally incapable of commanding.
Sure, he got Osama (or, rather, Seal Team 6 did) and he made a relatively strong show in Libya. But the terrorist mastermind and the tyrant who wore eyeliner were no match for our Congress, the most unappealing bunch of babies this country has seen since Occupy Wall Street starting camping out at Zuccotti Park.
And now that the so-called supercommittee is in the process of folding its tent, having failed to come to an agreement about cutting $1.2 trillion from the budget, the question becomes: Where was President Waldo?
Somewhere otherwise known as "not here."
Yes, he's been glad-handing with some world leaders, most recently in Hawaii, where he happened to make the unfortunate comment that American companies were a bit lazy. Yes, he was taken completely out of context by the people who tend to do that for a living, but he's far too smart not to have realized that they were going to slice and dice his words to get that juicy sound bite about Americans being lazy.
It's a bit disconcerting to watch your commander in chief flitting around the world when the economy is only days from imploding again, this time with serious repercussions for the Defense Department if the deficit reductions aren't made. To get back to my original analogy, it's kind of like Mom taking a vacation two days before Thanksgiving and telling the family that there's sliced turkey breast and cheese in the fridge so, enjoy!
