Tough Love from Obamalovin' Media

They carried him to election so who better to tell him he's getting a bit too heavy to carry?  Not in terms of his weight surely, but the additional baggage the shameful loss in Massachusetts adds to the administration destined to turn back the tides and heal the planet.  It's getting too tough to spin so a little tough love was in order.  Frank Rich and Bob Herbert, both do a left wing intervention for their beloved Barack. The message "Snap out of it."

Starting with Herbert, who wonders how loud do the alarm bells have to get:

While the nation was suffering through the worst economy since the Depression, the Democrats wasted a year squabbling like unruly toddlers over health insurance legislation. No one in his or her right mind could have believed that a workable, efficient, cost-effective system could come out of the monstrously ugly plan that finally emerged from the Senate after long months of shady alliances, disgraceful back-room deals, outlandish payoffs and abject capitulation to the insurance companies and giant pharmaceutical outfits.

The public interest? Forget about it.

Herbert's advice, get cracking on jobs, though he doesn't expect much in the way of results:

 The Democrats still hold the presidency and large majorities in both houses of Congress. The idea that they are not spending every waking hour trying to fix the broken economic system and put suffering Americans back to work is beyond pathetic. Deficit reduction is now the mantra in Washington, which means that new large-scale investments in infrastructure and other measures to ease the employment crisis and jump-start the most promising industries of the 21st century are highly unlikely.

What we’ll get instead is rhetoric. It’s cheap, so we can expect a lot of it.

Scorch, of course Herbert has to land a few zingers on the GOP but much of the article is directed at the administration and Congress who don't seem to get it.  Frank Rich takes a gentler approach but points out Obama is no JFK:

 Kennedy didn’t settle for the generic populist rhetoric of Obama’s latest threats to “fight” unspecified bankers some indeterminate day. He instead took the strong action of dressing down U.S. Steel by name. As Richard Reeves writes in his book “President Kennedy,” reporters were left “literally gasping.” The young president called out big steel for threatening “economic recovery and stability” while Americans risked their lives in Southeast Asia. J.F.K. threatened to sic his brother’s Justice Department on corporate records and then held firm as his opponents likened his flex of muscle to the power grabs of Hitler and Mussolini. (Sound familiar?) U.S. Steel capitulated in two days. The Timessoon reported on its front page that Kennedy was at “a high point in popular support.”

Can anyone picture Obama exerting such take-no-prisoners leadership to challenge those who threaten our own economic recovery and stability at a time of deep recession and war? That we can’t is a powerful indicator of why what happened in Massachusetts will not stay in Massachusetts if this White House fails to reboot.

Call me crazy Mr. Rich, but Obama has done a lot of calling out to corporate America.  There has been lots of finger pointing but job creation has been MIA.  Democrats surprisingly enough, float new ideas daily on how they might still pass health care.  The pivots to jobs and the economy  has been nothing more than rhetoric, but as Herbert said, talk's cheap.