Fuck Your Leadership Brand

Oh noes! Obama's precious brand is tanking! : (from Americablog)

It's particularly interesting that this news comes from Marc Ambinder. Ambinder is often the go-to guy when the White House wants to get their story out there. That means we can reliably trust that Ambinder's story is true. Here are two salient grafs:

The decline in what one White House aide called “the leadership brand” is clear from the polling. In April 2009, Gallup found 73 percent of Americans who said that Obama was a “strong leader.” In May 2010, that had declined to 60 percent. In March 2011, Gallup had it down to 52 percent. There has been no more recent polling on that issue, but aides fear that after Libya and the debt-ceiling debate, the number almost certainly has dropped again.

According to the two senior officials, the plan to arrest that decline is for Obama to no longer be seen as above the fray. While they believe Republicans were both wrong and unfair to claim the president had no plan to bring down the deficit, they know it hurt him. So they will try to show the president as having specific plans and then show him fighting for them. No more will the president be focusing primarily on issues that can attract bipartisan support and appeal to a Republican House. And no longer will he be so willing to let Congress work out the details on its own.

All of that is great, and laudable. But part of what still concerns me is this:

To an important degree, this change in strategy is made easier by the deterioration of the president’s trust in House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. Three White House officials said the debt debate left that relationship in tatters, with the president deeply disappointed in Boehner’s refusal to try to deliver Republican votes for a “grand bargain.” The president saw himself as willing to challenge his party’s activists and was dismayed when Boehner wouldn’t, in the words of one official, “man-up” and take on his.

The President trusted Boehner?  Particularly during election season?  It's the same way he trusted the Republicans during health care, and paid for it dearly. At this late date, it's troubling that the President still had a pollyanna view of the GOP. And it's difficult to see how he turns all of this around when he's been the problem from the beginning. This is who he is.  He's 50 years old.  He doesn't have a stomach for the fight.  I'm not sure how you just flip a switch and change all of that.

I don't want to burst anyone's bubble, but you know another reason Obama's "leadership brand" might not be selling that well?

Because he's a shitty leader. Because instead of tackling real issues in our actual economy, he's dedicated the last year of his presidency to grandstanding about a non-existent problem.

You know what I call that? Awful fucking leadership. Unspeakably bad.

Maybe you if had spent the last year telling the American people about ways to actually improve the economy rather than trying to pump up your brand's approval ratings, you wouldn't have to worry about your fucking brand in the first place.

Leadership Brand!!!

His advisers are worried about his fucking LEADERSHIP BRAND!!!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!