Tom Friedman's Fantasy World: Obama Is Tiger Woods or Something

Esteemed New York Times columnist and White House aide Tom Friedman helpfully offers advice to our beleaguered Golfer-in-Chief, chock full of lame gold analogies. Friedman should be thankful the nutty Paul Krugman is around to deflect attention from his own slobbering drivel.

Despite the carping by critics, I’m glad the president went on vacation because one of the most useful things he could do right now is play golf — a lot of golf — but not that friendly foursome thing with his aides that he usually does. No, real golf: Match play, head to head, with real money on the line. Match-play golf is a great teacher. As any good golfer will tell you, the first rule of match play is this: Never play not to lose. Do not wait and hope for your opponent to make a mistake. Always play the course, always play to win and always assume your opponent will do well — will make that long putt — so you have to do better.

Obama refuses to divulge his golf scores (probably for good reason), so you think he'd actually wager money going head to head against anyone?

For months now, Obama has been playing not to lose, keeping his own plans for a “Grand Bargain” on debt, deficits, taxes, jobs and investment vague, while waiting for the Republicans to say crazier and crazier stuff — like promising the return of $2-a-gallon gasoline, or insisting that climate change was made up by scientists to get research grants (but politicians taking millions from oil companies can be trusted to tell us the truth on this issue), or that Texas has a right to secede. But while the G.O.P. candidates have been obliging the president with their nuttiness, it has not helped Obama’s poll ratings.

So Republicans are all nuts, but the man running up trillion-dollar deficits is the one to be trusted.

OK.

Many Americans can see that most of these G.O.P. candidates are closer to professional wrestlers than politicians — with their fake body slams and anti-Obama bluster. All they are missing are the Tarzan outfits. This is the silly season.

Tarzan outfits? Um, what if someone suggested putting Obama in a Tarzan outfit? How well would that go over with the delicate sensibilities of the folks at the New York Times? Hey Tom, what if someone Photoshopped Herman Cain into a Tarzan outfit? Wouldn't that be raaaaacist?

Friedman then delves into some fantasy world where Obama hasn't properly presented his "Grand Bargain" to the great unwashed, to which we ask, what Grand Bargain? Tom, I hate to break this to you, but there isn't any plan. Obama has no idea what he's doing, other than hoping idiots like you continue holding his jockstrap for him.

It’s all nonsense. Obama is smart, decent and tough, with exactly the right instincts about where the country needs to go. He has accomplished a lot more than he’s gotten credit for — with an opposition dedicated to making him fail. But lately he is seriously off his game. He’s not Jimmy Carter. He’s Tiger Woods — a natural who’s lost his swing. He has so many different swing thoughts in his head, so many people whispering in his ear about what the polls say and how he needs to position himself to get re-elected, that he has lost all his natural instincts for the game. He needs to get back to basics.

So he's Tiger Woods now? You mean a guy with a carefully crafted public image who turned out to be a cheating lowlife?

It’s crazy what’s happening in America today: We’re having an economic crisis and the politicians are having an election — and there is almost no overlap between the two. The president needs to bring them together. But that can only happen if he stops playing not to lose and goes for broke himself. Our problems are not insoluble. We need a Grand Bargain — where each side gives something on spending, taxes and new investments — and we’re on our way out of this.

Oh, it's that simple? Obama presents his Grand Bargain, the GOP simply goes along and we're on our way out? Why hasn't someone thought of this already?

Run on that, Mr. President: At best you’ll generate enough public pressure (now totally missing) to shame sane Republicans into joining you, and we’ll get a deal, and at worst you can run in 2012 on a platform, which, if you win, will actually give you a mandate for the change the country needs.

Um, what happened to that mandate for change he had after winning in 2008?

Stupidity on Steroids

Well, you figured some idiot had to buy Obama's fantasy tale about his daughter asking when he was going to plug the hole. Maybe if he stuck his head in it that would do the trick. Nothing bigger than that. Anyway, leave it to a clown from the New York Time to actually believe the story, let alone expound on it and suggest she's presidential material herself.

It's Tom Friedman, so naturally there's the obligatory reference to China added for good measure. Must be in his contract that China has to be mentioned in every column.

This oil leak is not President Obama’s fault. Stopping the spill is BP’s responsibility; it both caused it and it has the best access to the best technology to plug it. Of course, as the nation’s C.E.O., Mr. Obama has to oversee the cleanup, and he has been on top of that.

Really? He's been on top of it? Maybe I'm confused but six weeks into this mess and they guy has devoted more time to watching and talking about basketball that he's devoted to the oil spill. Two photo-ops in Louisiana doesn't translate into be "on top of it" in my book.

His most important job, though, is one he has yet to take on: shaping the long-term public reaction to the spill so that we can use it to generate the political will to break our addiction to oil. In that job, the most important thing Mr. Obama can do is react to this spill as a child would — because it is precisely that simple gut reaction, repeated over and over, speech after speech, that could change our national conversation on energy.

Well, the man-child president has reacted like a child. None of it's his fault, blame the bad guys and go about playing games (can't possible miss his precious golfing).

This is what passes for wisdom at the Times. Let's run national policy based on the thoughts--real or imaged--of children. Hey, there's a plan!

Answering those questions is the president’s great opportunity here, but he has to think like a kid. Kids get it. They ask: Why would we want to stay dependent on an energy source that could destroy so many birds, fish, beaches and ecosystems before the next generation has a chance to enjoy them? Why aren’t we doing more to create clean power and energy efficiency when so many others, even China, are doing so? And, Daddy, why can’t you even mention the words “carbon tax,” when the carbon we spill into the atmosphere every day is just as dangerous to our future as the crude oil that has been spilling into the gulf?

Unless they've been indoctrinated in the classroom, and there's a 505/50 chance they already have, what kid out there spends even a second thinking about a carbon tax? Can't we let kids be kids and maybe have some adult leadership in Washington?

Obama's been acting like a kid for his 17 months in office, bullying people and having his thugs do things the Chicago Way. Acting like a child has brought us this mess. Maybe if he actually acted like an adult and took matters seriously he'd be viewed more credibly.

Instead the only thing I'm expecting from him this week is a breakdown of the NBA Finals between the Lakers and Celtics, not any coherent plan for the Gulf crisis.

Obama's Summer Re-Reading

One of the dumbest annual exercises is the media's silly obsession with what presidents read during their summer vacation. Since they thought George W. Bush was such a dunce they always made sure to tell us what he was supposedly reading between covering his brush-clearing and Cindy Sheehan press conferences. So naturally with Barack Obama touted to be some towering intellect we've already seen countless stories about what he's reading while not sending us further into crushing debt and hitting triple bogeys on the golf course.

So we note with some amusement this report from a sharp-eyed NY Post scribe.

Looks like President Obama is one slow reader.

The commander in chief's list of beach books for his Martha's Vineyard vacation includes an environmental best seller that he bragged about reading almost a year ago on the campaign trail.

Obama was so taken with Thomas Friedman's "Hot, Flat and Crowded" that he quoted it at a rally last September in Flint, Mich., and one media outlet described it as the book that was currently on the then-candidate's nightstand.

The 448-page book appeared again on Monday on the list of five books that Obama planned to read on his vacation in Martha's Vineyard.

For his weeklong vacation, the White House claims Obama also brought along four other books -- ranging from gritty crime drama "Lush Life" by Richard Price to David McCullough's 752-page "John Adams."

Maybe he should have brought a golf book.

After hitting the links at the Mink Meadows course in Vineyard Haven with his personal chef Sam Kass, a neighbor spotted Obama shooting a triple bogey -- at best.

No doubt Obama's lackeys at MSNBC and CNN will be yukking it up over this gaffe.

Instapundit, Ace and Hot Air link. Thanks!

Thomas Friedman is Over

Thomas Friedman wishes 9/11 never happened, because it's made us all stupid.

He'd much rather discuss the bridge collapse in Minneapolis or the state of the facilities at LaGuardia Airport. Or emissions standards.

Anything except the fact we're at war.

In the end, his latest column is just another shot at Rudy Giuliani.

Yawn. Thomas Friedman is so over.

More from Jules Crittenden, Don Surber, Wizbang, Stop the ACLU.