WaPo's Cohen: Obama Needs To Fire Key People Or Americans Will Fire Him

This really is the summer of media's discontent.

As Barack Obama's poll numbers collapse along with the fate of Democrats in November, more of the President's fans are calling for heads to roll at the White House.

Just four days after Chris "Tingle Up The Leg" Matthews called for both Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Defense Secretary Robert Gates to be given their walking papers, the Washington Post's Richard Cohen warned that if Obama doesn't fire some key people, Americans are going to fire him.

Readers are advised to strap themselves in tightly, for "Obama's Shrinking Presidency" provides some dangerous changes in cabin pressure:

One of the unintended results of the redecoration of the Oval Office was the downsizing of Barack Obama. In last week's prime-time address to the nation, the president sat behind a massive and capaciously empty desk, looking somehow smaller than he ever has -- a man physically reduced by sinking polls, a lousy economy and the prospect that his party might lose control of Congress. Behold something we never thought we'd see with Obama: The Incredible Shrinking Presidency.

This is an amazing and, to me, somewhat frightening, turn of events. The folks who ran a very smart presidential campaign in 2008 have left the defining of the Obama presidency to others, in this case people on the edge of insanity.

After running through some of the poll numbers, and discussing the Birther issue, Cohen drilled home the point that must really be making September feel like the dead of winter for liberal media members across the fruited plain:

Obama is not all that liked and not very much known. He has become a polarizing figure -- irrationally hated by Republicans and lacking much of his original support. Among whites, for instance, if the election were held now, Obama would get just an alarming 28 percent of the vote. We are once again two nations.

Cohen next addressed how some of Obama's unpopularity is caused by the lousy economy, which, of course, was all blamed on George W. Bush despite Democrats controlling Congress since January 2007. But the Post columnist employed what conservatives would call "tough love":

His stutter-step approach to certain issues -- his wimpy statements regarding the planned Islamic center in Manhattan, for instance -- erodes not just his standing but his profile. What we thought we knew, we do not. Like a picture hung in the sun, he fades over time.

Then came the recommendations:

But what Obama can do -- what he must do -- is get some new people. His staff ill-serves him so that he presents a persona at odds with his performance. [...]

The president needs better speechwriters. The president needs a staff to tell him not to give an Oval Office address unless he has something worthy of the Oval Office to say. The president needs someone to look into the camera so that, when the light goes on and he says, "Good evening," he looks commander in chiefish: big. In other words, the president needs to fire some key people. Either that, or the way things are going, the American people are going to fire him.

Indeed, but first they're going to fire Obama's accomplices in Congress, a fact that likely bothers Cohen greatly despite him ignoring it in this piece.

But there's another issue at play here: the junior senator from Illinois was sold to the American people during the campaign as being one of the most intelligent presidential candidates ever.

Fawning media members gushed over his Ivy League education and his intellectual prowess. 

Now, after approaching 20 months in office, his problems are all his staff's fault.

This seems hypocritical of liberals that always want to blame problems in the society on America's CEOs.

I guess even as they criticize the object of their affection, so-called journalists need to assign the real responsibility for this adminstration's failure to others.

Unlike their normal modus operandi, media members are now dutifully protecting the captain as this ship sinks.

It really is amazing the number of rationalizations necessary to be a liberal these days.