Twice in the last week, when people were hoping Barack Obama would stake out an aggressive position on important issues, he insteadgave a third-person analysis of the situation that didn't seem to acknowledge hisrole as a potential agent of change. First, there was the Iraq War supplemental, on which Obama speculated that Bush would get the bill he wanted if he vetoed the Democratic plan. (You can see the horror from Kos and Matt Stoller, and if you can stomach it, the cackling from RedState.)
Then at his town hall meeting to discuss health care in Portsmouth, NH, he declined to commit himself to anything beyond the banal, and offered the observation that "I think [health reform] can be done, but we've got to build amovement in this country behind that during this election cycle so thatthere's a mandate for that to take place, for the next president." As Ezra notes, the time to build that mandate is now, and to date, Obama hasn't expended any effort to build it.
Some comments from the locals:
