NYT: Obama’s Credibility Gap

NEW YORK TIMES, 1/26/2010, Op-Ed by Bob Herbert - Who is Barack Obama? Americans are still looking for the answer, and if they don’t get it soon — or if they don’t like the answer — the president’s current political problems will look like a walk in the park. ∴ Mr. Obama may be personally very appealing, but he has positioned himself all over the political map: the anti-Iraq war candidate who escalated the war in Afghanistan; the opponent of health insurance mandates who made a mandate to buy insurance the centerpiece of his plan; the president who stocked his administration with Wall Street insiders and went to the mat for the banks and big corporations, but who is now trying to present himself as a born-again populist. ∴ Mr. Obama is in danger of being perceived as someone whose rhetoric, however skillful, cannot always be trusted. He is creating a credibility gap for himself, and if it widens much more he won’t be able to close it. Read more at NYT...

Bob Herbert is a columnist for the New York Times. His opinion pieces generally lean left. --bc