Barack Obama is no James Whitmore

The late James Whitmore was a fine actor, who, in addition to his film work, also shone in a couple of one-man stage performances, including Give ‘em Hell, Harry!, in which his portrayal of Harry Truman was so close to the original that it was lauded by none other than Truman’s own daughter, Margaret.

Fast forward a few decades, and we find Whitmore, a couple of years before his death, endorsing Obama for president in 2007. Well, nobody’s perfect. Obama, however, might have benefited more from Whitmore’s insights into Truman’s character and history, than from the actor’s endorsement, since Barry is now trying to imitate Truman’s combative, overtly partisan 1948 presidential campaign. Unfortunately, Obama comes across more as an inadequate second understudy to Whitmore, than as anything even remotely resembling the genuine article.

For one thing, to charge the Republican Congress as “do-nothing” is risible, given the fact that the Republicans have been the majority in the House of Representatives for less than a year. What was the Democrat-controlled Congress doing for the first two years of Obama’s presidency, besides passing an unpopular and - as we now know, having read the legislation after its passage at the invitation of Nancy Pelosi - unsustainable health care bill? There is also the little matter of the Democrat majority in the Senate, which, under Harry Reid, has generally eschewed compromise. Top it off with Obama’s complete lack of leadership, even on legislation he strongly favored, and what you wind up with is just another display of garden variety political hypocrisy. On the stump, Truman at least came across as a fire-eater; Obama sounds like a petulant restaurant patron who’s found a caterpillar in his arugula.

The problem is not a do-nothing Congress; the problem is a good-for-nothing president.