The Public Has Declared The Obama Presidency To Be Over, June, 2014 -- NBC White House Correspondent, Chuck Todd

This is very, very interesting.

The other day I posted a long political note (which I have re-posted in its entirety below -- due to the interest it has generated -- suggesting that presidential missteps are not due to "bad management" but due to "bad leadership." That applied to all presidents, not just recent presidents.

Today, the NBC reporter who covers the White House and who was clearly vying to be the next press secretary said the America people are telling us the Obama presidency is "over."

Updates

Later, 2:45 p.m.: I posted the original post at 11:31 a.m. this morning and left it up for ten minutes. I then took it down as promised to make sure Bakken stories were at the top of the blog. I now see that this is the very same "headline" over at Drudge: Todd Turns: Obama "Over" 

Original Post

White House press secretary when Jay Carney resigned, said practically the same thing I said in that post: President Obama has effectively departed the Oval Office.

Chuck Todd, NBC White House correspondent:

The survey would appear to be so bad, in fact, that NBC News' Chuck Todd said Tuesday that the poll basically means the public has declared the Obama presidency to be over.

"This poll is a disaster for the president," Todd said. "You look at the presidency here: Lowest job rating, tied for the lowest; lowest on foreign policy. His administration is seen as less competent than the Bush administration, post-Katrina." 

"On the issue of do you believe he can still lead? A majority believe no. Essentially the public is saying your presidency is over," Todd added.

Todd has it right, unlike the Chicago Tribune writer. It was a failure of leadership.

It was said some years ago that Lyndon B. Johnson remarked in dismay that "when he lost Walter Cronkite, he lost the country." Some years from now, some folks will look back on Christiane Amanpour's reporting two days ago that was her "Walter Cronkite" moment.

The "stuff' below the asterisk was posted a couple days ago. I am re-posting it here to tie in with the comments above.

*********************************************

Pulling A Bergdahl

A reader sent me a link to this article in which The Chicago Tribune lists all of President Obama's failures (and the list seems endless). The Tribune says President Obama failed, because like President Bush, he is a poor manager.

Regardless of whether one feels President Obama has made any mistakes or not, and let's for argument's sake say he has been perfect, making no mistakes, there's something inherently wrong with the writer's premise. 

My response:

The article says the mistakes were because President Obama was a poor manager. I disagree with that: Presidents, just like four-star general officers, are not "managers." Presidents are not elected and general officers are not promoted for being "good managers."

Presidents and four-star general officers are leaders and change-agents.

This is what Obama and Bush both had in common: they held no one accountable. President Obama should have fired the cabinet head as soon as the specific debacle surfaced. He should have fired Hillary after Benghazi. That would have gotten the attention of everyone in his administration; no one is "holier" than Hillary among the Democrats; she is THEIR sacred cow. He should have fired Sebelius as soon as the first word of disaster in ObamaCare. Shinseki should have been fired a year earlier.

However, that is past.

I think with the Iraqi "thing," I think we are seeing something entirely new with regard to President Obama.

I don't have any clue how "being a poor manager" would have resulted in losing Iraq, as we are now doing. It was his decision not to make a preemptive strike: his decision alone. That's not a failure of management; that's a failure of leadership. 

No, starting about six months ago, maybe a year ago, Obama went AWOL. He has simply walked away from the presidency.

While CNN video was showing a professional army sweeping through Mosul and then Tikrit, to the doorsteps of Baghdad, the President walked (actually he literally flew) away from Washington (just as he walked away from the situation room the night Benghazi fell).

While video was showing a professional army sweeping through Iraq, President Obama left Washington, DC, to a) watch native Americans dance in a remote location of North Dakota/South Dakota (really?); b) to talk about global warming to college students at a non-descript venue in southern California (UC Irvine? Really?); and, c) and I can't make this up, went golfing, according to his mouthpiece, The New York Times. 

President Obama understands the frustration of Sgt Bergdahl who also walked away from his post, frustrated with the US Army.

President Obama has similarly telegraphed his frustration with Washington, DC; Congress; and, the Drudge Report, and is simply pulling a Bergdahl. So, I don't think it has anything to do with poor management. It was his lack of leadership (not holding anyone accountable) that resulted in the failures prior to Iraq, and now the "failure in Iraq," is due to walking away from the job.

********************************** 

In my 21 years of formal education (I include one year of kindergarten though I only attended half-days, all that was offered at that time), I never once heard Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt (both of them), Kennedy, or even Bill Clinton referred to as great managers. Likewise, I have never once considered Generals US Grant, Robert E Lee, George Custer, Douglas MacArthur, George Patton, great managers.

Even Elizabeth Warren (is she the only Native American currently serving in the US Senate?) would not refer to the four great Native American Indian chiefs -- Crazy Horse (the greatest), Sitting Bull (a close second), Red Cloud, and Spotted Tail -- as "managers." They were leaders, each one of them and many, many others. 

*******************************

One of the best stories of leadership I have ever read was John Hershey's 1944 account of JFK's surviving and saving his men when his PT 109 was cut in half by a Japanese destroyer in the Pacific in WWII. I did not understand the weight on President Lincoln's shoulders during the Civil War until I saw "the movie."