Like me, N.Y. Times columnist Maureen Dowd has come to feel that somehow, some way Barack Obama needs to strap on the shootin’ irons like Gary Cooper and go out and face the cigar-chomping Ma Clinton and her gang of cutthroat spinners. In ten words, “You can’t be elected president unless you prove you’re tough.”
Jotting #1: “Obama’s multiculturalism is a selling point with many Democrats. But his impassioned egghead advisers have made his campaign seem not only out of his control, but effete and vaguely foreign — the same unflattering light that doomed Michael Dukakis and John Kerry. ”
Jotting #2: “It has taken Obama a year to start seriously rebutting Hillary’s risible claim that she has far more national security experience than he does. Having a first lady tea in Belfast is not equivalent to bringing peace to Northern Ireland.”
Jotting #3: “Obama sounded whiny after his losses, chastising reporters on his plane for asking him hard questions about Goolsbee and Antonin Rezko. Privately, his people conceded that he hadn’t been as fierce about winning as Hillary, once more playing rope-a-dope.”
Jotting #4: “He’s now learned what Hillary learned in Iowa: You can’t cruise to victory on a coronation strategy.”