Tony Seton to Obama: "Come Back Home Where You Can Do Some Good"
My friend and colleague Tony Seton takes President Obama to task this morning on his daily audio blog post for racing around the world accomplishing no good goals while things at home continue to crumble slowly. He bluntly accuses our president of failing to exercise leadership. Tony's been beating up on Barack a good bit lately. My label-resistant friend carefully cultivates an image as an independent curmudgeon and does it better than most who get paid to do that. I generally find myself in mild disagreement with him but lately I've been finding more and more resonance in his pieces. I'm no longer sure Obama is the leader and the outside-the-box thinker I thought we elected a year ago now or if he was just such a relief from the guy he followed that he looked like a genius. I was reading this morning that Obama has been trying to get some concessions on the traditional Sino-American dividing issues and making absolutely no headway. There's a shock. You can't tell the banker who holds your mortgage to stop playing golf at the segregated country club or you'll take your business elsewhere. There, as here, there is no elsewhere. Globally, things are going to continue to morph into very different scenarios. I'm not sure Obama is up to that challenge. Maybe he needs to send Joe Biden. Or leave it to Hillary while he attends to the massive and unyielding socio-political problems here at home.
