PAUL MORIGI/GETTY IMAGES FOR OVATION
Enter
timed Rose Garden speech,” writes
Walter Russell Mead, who spares
a few thousand words to pillory
Dowd for her Panglossian take on
presidential power.
Others have piled on. “[Dowd’s]
still stuck in the gauzy past when
presidents really did have at least
a bit of arm-twisting power,”
writes Kevin Drum.
Here’s Doug Mataconis:
The only explanation I can come
up with is that Dowd has become enamored with the idealized New York-Washington
corridor vision of politics epitomized by the movie she references in her column ... You can’t
LOOKING FORWARD
IN ANGST
just solve problems by being a
“strong leader” and giving nice
speeches. If the political winds
are blowing against you, then
you’re not going to win.
All of which makes a lot of sense.
So, what, then, is the good thing
that Dowd has done, potentially,
for America? Well, thanks to Dowd
weighing in over the weekend,
there’s the very real possibility that
she’s single-handedly made one of
the dumber strains in contemporary political punditry — “leadership surrealism” — unfashionable.
To the leadership surrealists, the
president’s main failing is that he
hasn’t figured out a way to use the
“bully pulpit” to deliver a speech of
magical, sentimental wallop.
If Dowd has sinned by penning
HUFFINGTON
04.28.13
Dowd on
stage with
Alec Baldwin
(left), Ovation
Chairman
Ken Solomon,
and the CEO
of Americans
for the
Arts, Bob
Lynch, at the
Americans
for the Arts
25th Annual
Nancy Hanks
Lecture on
Arts and
Public Policy
in 2012.