Withering evaluation of Obama’s leadership by prominent leftist

Jim C. writes:

Similarly to the bad news for Obama in the poll linked at Drudge, liberal economist Jeffrey Sachs crushed leftist hearts on Obama’s economic leadership (the lack thereof) last month when he announced on MSNBC of all places:

“We’re almost three years into this administration, and there’s never been a plan. And that’s what everybody feels. And the president didn’t lead. He waited. The quintessential image, sadly, of an administration that I supported and hoped for much better, is the president waiting by the phone to hear what Congress calls to tell him. It doesn’t work in this country that way…. We’ve been drifting down. And we had a short-term plan that failed. A short-term stimulus that was supposed to get the economy back on track, but it failed. And now we have nothing behind it. And we have no agreements, and we have no leadership. And, frankly, I do think it’s pretty odd the president’s on vacation right now. Normally I wouldn’t care about such things, but the world markets are in deep crisis. It’s no joke. This isn’t just an up-and-down little blip. This is a very serious situation.”

LA replies:

Sachs’s evaluation is very tough. But still, how many presidents have a comprehensive plan? Don’t they tend to have a couple of major initiatives they want to push through, and focus on them? Also, Sachs is a way-out leftist, and to that faction, anything not way-out leftist is no good or right-wing.

In any case, we’re back in the interminable dispute over whether Obama is a hard-driving leftist president, or a waffler who adopts Republican positions, or (Sachs’s view) a passive leftist president who waits on the leadership of Congressional Democrats.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 21, 2011 12:47 PM | Send