Note that beyond Brown's caustic comment, Jon Meacham makes perhaps the unkindest comparison of all, analogizing Barack Obama in 2011 to Jimmy Carter in 1979. Ouch!
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Tina, what has happened to this president, the president from hope and change? What has happened?
TINA BROWN: Well it's so interesting. I think that Obama doesn't like his job, actually. I think that he is genuinely of a professioral disposition in the sense that I think that he's interested in chewing over the pros and cons, and he doesn't like, he doesn't like power and he doesn't know how to exercise power. And I think knowing how to exercise power is absolutely crucial. He doesn't understand how to underpin his ideas with the political gritty, granular business of getting it done. And that kind of gap has just widened and widened and widened. And so that every time there is a moment, a window where he can jump in, like something like a Simpson-Bowles as well, he just doesn't do it. He hangs back at crucial moments when you have to dive through that window.
SCARBOROUGH: And regardless of your ideology, it is very safe to say, I think most people would agree: LBJ he is not, Bill Clinton, he is not, when it just comes to understanding how to make Washington work.
MIKE BARNICLE: It appears off of what Tina just said, you just said, it appears that you could make a case that Barack Obama doesn't like politics.
BROWN: Right. I absolutely feel that.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Well who would today? I mean, I think it's great that --
SCARBOROUGH: Oh come on. If you don't like medicine, don't be a doctor. If you don't like politics, don't put yourself out there to run the free world, Mika.
BRZEZINSKI: You know what? Politics today need to be changed.
SCARBOROUGH: Stop the apologizing!
BRZEZINSKI: I'm not apologizing.
SCARBOROUGH: You're apologizing. [Sarcastically imitates Mika's voice] Who would like politics today? You know what?
BRZEZINSKI: Who would?
SCARBOROUGH: He is running the free world. He better know a lot of people love politics. Bill Clinton loves politics. FDR loved politics. Ronald Reagan loved politics. Great leaders love what they do. So who would love politics?
BROWN: Isn't it really also about, well the other word for politics is just doing what it takes to get it done. Like, one of the things that's interesting about Obama is that he kind of, and I think he does believe in this, that his idea of being a transformative figure who can cross many persuasions and orientations and aisles. And yet when it is actually taken to reaching out and really bringing that in, and trying, I don't think that it really --
SCARBOROUGH: He doesn't do that.
JON MEACHAM: The analogy to 1979 is something we should explore a little bit more, for all the obvious reasons: a technocratic president who thinks he's really smart and perhaps above it all. And a slightly unsettled Republican field. Sounds somewhat familiar.
SCARBOROUGH: It does sound familiar.
May I ask why it took these people three years to figure this all out?? Seems like only yesterday we were called racists at the mere thought.
-- Edited by hope on Wednesday 30th of November 2011 09:59:26 AM
-- Edited by hope on Wednesday 30th of November 2011 10:06:10 AM
Note that beyond Brown's caustic comment, Jon Meacham makes perhaps the unkindest comparison of all, analogizing Barack Obama in 2011 to Jimmy Carter in 1979. Ouch!
Seems like only yesterday we were called racists at the mere thought. 
