WHERE IS THE PASSION, MR. PRESIDENT?

I ran across this articl and I think it pretty well sums up what a lot of people are thinking and feeling.

ORIGINAL ARTICE HERE
Mr. President, where is the passion?


By Neal Gabler
December 20, 2009

WELL, THAT was fast. Though past presidential candidates were elected with a larger percentage of votes, it is fair to say that no modern president reached office with a greater outpouring of sentiment, enthusiasm, and passion than Barack Obama. Supporters felt this was a landmark election, not only because Obama was African-American but also because he promised a different kind of presidency. They actually believed he would make good on his campaign slogan. Finally, change that would matter.

It didn’t take long for the disillusion to set in, especially among those on the left who had been Obama’s most ardent admirers. Where they had expected a full-throttle presidency, undoing what George W. Bush had done, what they got instead is a timorous one. In 1988, Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis pronounced that the election was not about ideology but about competence. Now we have the presidency that Dukakis promised. It is cautious, deliberative, reasonable, experienced, not terribly ideological and entirely competent - very different from George W. Bush’s government of ideologues, cronies, and hacks.

But there is one big thing that the administration lacks: passion. It is hard to remember a presidency that was as passionless as this one is - a presidency that puts down no markers, draws no lines in the sand, makes no stand. That, even more than the compromises themselves, may be what really riles Obama’s old supporters. It is that he doesn’t seem tortured by the compromise. Simply put, Obama seems to be missing the passion gene...CONTINUED