Leadership

Speaking as a moderate Republican--that is, as a Democrat, since the GOP has declared moderate Republicans like me (and Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr., Abraham Lincoln etc.) personae non grata in the GOP (which now stands for Greed Over Principles I guess)--I agree that President Obama should have shown more leadership.

So I turned to the dozen people running for the GOP presidential nomination to see what sort of leadership they afforded in this national crisis of choice.

Ooops. All but Jon Hunstman were MIA throughout the crisis, weren't they? And Huntsman's chances of nomination are zilch, since he's the closest thing to a moderate who's in the running.

So while President Obama could have shown more leadership, he showed some--and the GOP candidates (other than Huntsman)...none.

And don't tell me Romney did. He was like Russia declaring war on Japan after it was all over except for grabbing Manchuria and the Kurils. Now there's a man of, um, flexible principles, always eager to run to the front of the parade to pretend he's leading it.

The last national poll of hundreds of presidential historians ranked President Obama at #15--well below a number of Republicans as well as Democrats, so you can't accuse them of all being Libruls (Reagan came in at #17 BTW).

And the last Republican Prez, Bush II? He polled 6 from the bottom. He was quite the leader, though. However, when strong leadership isn't much good when it's combined with a mediocre intelligence and being proudly ignorant of macroeconomics, world affairs, and judging people (remember him "looking into Putin's soul"?).

You don't have someone like that in the race, but don't worry--Rick Parry, Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachman might run and provide more of that magic combo of ambition+mediocrity. Until then, you've just got mediocrity free of complications.

Except for Huntsman.

Good luck with getting him nominated by today's GOP.