For a really devastating critique of Barack Obama check out Walter Russell Mead’s American Interest blogpost “Falling Between Two Stools.” It’s particularly devastating, since Mead is not part of any right-wing attack machine—he voted (I believe) for Obama and he sympathizes with many (but not all) of his policies—and in much of his writing he has shown a sympathetic understanding of those on many points of the political spectrum. Here his harshest criticism is directed not at Obama’s policy goals but at the way he does business. Key paragraph:
“Here is the paradox we face: The President is a consensus-seeker whose decision making style rewards polarization and a conciliator who loses friends without winning over enemies.”
Mead has been teaching a course at Bard College on great political thinkers, including Machiavelli (his blog has featured some really good reflections on them). One doesn’t have to know very much about Machiavelli to know the contempt he would have felt for a political leader who operates in the way Mead describes in the above paragraph. To me that suggests when Mead assesses Obama, at least one question he has in mind is, “What would Machiavelli do?”
