Obama Fails First Test of Leadership

In Barack Obama’s first major test in showing leadership of his party as the Democratic presidential nominee, he failed miserably.

As the titular head of the party, Obama was unable to control House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — unable to prevent her sabotaging the bailout bill and utterly clueless that she was going to ensure its failure by making a barn-burning partisan speech that would send many Republicans walking.

As John McCain was encouraging bipartisanship and cooperation and staying involved, Obama was phoning it in — literally — saying, “They can call me if they need me.” Meanwhile, his Democratic leadership ran amok and Obama is nowhere to be found.

In fact, for all of Obama’s efforts to tie McCain to President Bush, Barack Obama has obviously been hell-bent on avoiding being photographed with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) or Pelosi. When he could have and should have displayed a degree of leadership that would have perhaps provided voters with at least some minimal backup to his lofty speeches and soaring rhetoric, Obama instead hid out, hoping no one would notice.

I suppose one conspiracy theory could be that Pelosi and Reid told McCain to stay out of it so that it would make sense for Obama to stay out of it. That way, Obama would be able to wash his hands of all the nasty Nancy and Harry were planning on putting forth.