Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

I haven’t read one of Richard Cohen’s columns in a long time, but yesterday a regular reader alerted me to his latest buffoonery.  Apparently Obama’s “moral clarity” has disappeared:

As president [] he has tried so hard to be the un-George Bush that the former president’s overweening moralism — his insistence on seeing things as either black or white — has become an Obama gray. Human rights in general has been treated as if it’s a Republican idea. Obama should reread his Philadelphia speech. He’ll find a good man there.

Blah blah blah.  Obama the famously supple and nuanced campaigner saw things in black and white?  WTF?  [Oops.  Sorry.  Cohen is talking about George W. Bush here.  I misread.  But the general point stands: Cohen thinks Obama has lost his “moral clarity.”] But apparently this has become a trend.  Here’s Michelle Cottle:

As its “Arena” question to pundits this morning, Politico has “Obama’s Charisma: Where Did He Leave it?”

The implication seems to be — and I feel as though I’ve heard a variation on this question asked not infrequently of late — that Obama was such a dazzling, inspirational, transformational campaigner that it’s hard to fathom where this wonky, chilly, pathologically measured grind of a president came from.

What? Are we all suffering from short-term memory loss?….Yes, Obama has the juice to thrill the globe with his from-the-pulpit-esque speeches. (Which he still delivers when occasion calls.) But it’s not as though the guy has ever been known for his overwhelming warmth or charisma in the daily ebb and flow of things. He is as he has always presented himself to us.

Liberals are mad at Obama for sending more troops to Afghanistan.  The gay community thinks they’ve been betrayed because he hasn’t instantly repealing DADT.  M.J. Rosenberg is unhappy because Obama has turned out to be a “conciliator,” not a fighter.  Conservatives are apoplectic because the guy who billed himself as a moderate is trying to push through healthcare reform and a climate change bill.

But this is all kind of crazy.  Obama said repeatedly that he planned to shift resources from Iraq to Afghanistan.  He made it as clear as any candidate could that he wanted to dial down the temperature on the culture wars and avoid big social issues early in his presidency.  He spent an entire primary campaign selling himself as a post-partisan reach-across-the-aisle guy in contrast to the brawling Hillary Clinton.  And healthcare reform and cap-and-trade were the main pillars of his presidential campaign.

Once you get elected, real life is messy, politics intrudes, and mistakes are made.  Sure. And Obama has disappointed me in a bunch of respects.  But nine times out of ten, when I actually think through the ways I’m disappointed, I find that things are actually going almost exactly the way I expected them too.  That disappoints me sometimes, but it’s not because Obama has turned out to be a fraud or a fizzle.  It’s because he hasn’t.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate