A Bad, Bad Breakup

Insufferable NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd's on-again, off-again love affair with President Barack Obama is firmly in the off mode this week as she gets into the ouzo and sends in her November campaign epitaph she already has worked up while in a drunken stupor at 3 AM or something.

Once glowing, his press is now burning. “To a very real degree, 2008’s candidate of hope stands poised to become 2012’s candidate of fear,” John Heilemann wrote in New York magazine, noting that because Obama feels he can’t run on his record, his campaign will resort to nuking Romney. 

In his new book, “A Nation of Wusses,” the Democrat Ed Rendell, the former governor of Pennsylvania, wonders how “the best communicator in campaign history” lost his touch. 

The legendary speaker who drew campaign crowds in the tens of thousands and inspired a dispirited nation ended up nonchalantly delegating to a pork-happy Congress, disdaining the bully pulpit, neglecting to do any L.B.J.-style grunt work with Congress and the American public, and ceding control of his narrative. 

As president, Obama has never felt the need to explain or sell his signature pieces of legislation — the stimulus and health care bills — or stanch the flow of false information from the other side. 

“The administration lost the communications war with disastrous consequences that played out on Election Day 2010,” Rendell writes, and Obama never got credit for the two pieces of legislation where he reached for greatness. 

The president had lofty dreams of playing the great convener and conciliator. But at a fund-raiser in Minneapolis, he admitted he’s just another combatant in a capital full of Hatfields and McCoys. No compromises, just nihilism. 

And so we add MoDo the Red to the growing list of wealthy Villagers who are resigned to Mitt Romney's easy victory.   After all, they'll probably fare better financially, being the one percenters.  They're okay with a Romney win.  The blood is in the water now, and it's time to flense the President.

Going to be a long, hot summer.  Oh, and as TPM's Benjy Sarlin pointed out on Twitter on Monday, Maureen Dowd has had an axe to grind over Barack Obama for five, going on six years now.

He poses for the cover of Men’s Vogue and then gets huffy when people don’t treat him as Hannah Arendt.

For some of us, it’s hard to fathom being upset at getting accused of looking great in a bathing suit. But his friends say it played into this Harvard grad’s fear of being seen as “a dumb blond.” He has been known to privately mock “pretty boys” (read John Edwards, the Breck Girl of 2004).

He doesn’t lack confidence, but he’s so hung up on being seen as thoughtful that he sometimes comes across as too emotionally detached and cerebral with crowds yearning for an electric, visceral connection. J.F.K. mixed cool with fire.

At best, she's only dismissed him as a vapid lightweight.   She's always been disappointed with him, frankly.