All joking aside about "if Obama has lost [fill in the blank], he has lost America", there was a stunning display today of a formerly ardent supporter condemning in the most fundamental terms President Obama's failure of leadership.
On Morning Joe, leftist Columbia Prof. Jeffrey Sachs absolutely scalded the president. Declared Sachs: the stimulus failed. Three years in, Obama has no plan, and is providing "no leadership." Ouch. View video after the jump.
Watch Sachs, measured tones notwithstanding, absolutely scald PBO.
JEFFREY SACHS: We have a completely unsolved budget deficit. We don't have any agreements in this country what to do. But even worse than that, we don't have a clear position from the president who in our constitutional system is the one responsible for putting forward ideas . . . 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 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. It's not a matter that it's August. It's a matter that it's August 2011. So we've been drifting for a very long time. And 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 no leadership. And frankly I do think it's a 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 is no up-and-down little blip. This is a very serious situation.
At the very end, you'll hear fellow liberal professor and MSBNC contributor Melissa Harris-Perry trying to interject to defend President Obama. Her pitiful point? Even if PBO were in Washington, he couldn't accomplish anything.
