Frank Rich in the New York Times makes an interesting point:

After a good couple of years of living with the guy, we know the drill that defines his leadership, for better and worse. When trouble lurks, No Drama Obama stays calm as everyone around him goes ballistic. Then he waits — and waits — for that superdramatic moment when he can ride to his own rescue with what the press reliably hypes as The Do-or-Die Speech of His Career. Cable networks slap a countdown clock on the corner of the screen and pump up the suspense. Finally, Mighty Obama steps up to the plate and, lo and behold, confounds all the doubting bloviators yet again by (as they are wont to say) hitting it out of the park.

So it’s a little disingenuous for Obama to claim that he is not distracted by the 24-hour news cycle. What he’s actually doing is gaming it for all it’s worth.

As a mode of campaigning, this tactic was worth a great deal. Obama not only produced eloquent speeches — especially the classic disquisition on race that silenced the Jeremiah Wright pogrom — but also executed a remarkably disciplined tortoise-vs.-hare battle plan that outwitted and ultimately vanquished the hypercaffeinated political strategies of Hillary Clinton and John McCain. As a style of governing, however, this repeated cycle of extended above-the-fray passivity followed by last-minute oratorical heroics has now been stretched to the very limit.

He clearly has used the exact same strategy which worked so successfully as a candidate. But it’s true to say that although he’s indeed stayed out of the fray in this particular mess, he shouldn’t have allowed it to become the mess which it now is. It’s amusing to see Joe Wilson embarrassing himself, and it actually proves Obama’s point that the Republican wingnuts are the real problem in the healthcare reform debate, but I’m not sure why, when they’re been behaving insanely for months that he hasn’t just brushed them aside, said earlier that the time for bickering was over. Rich further suggests:

When we look back on these months, we may come to realize that there were in fact “death panels” threatening Americans all along — but they were on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and on Wall Street, not in the fine print of a health care bill on Capitol Hill. Obama’s deliberative brand of wait-and-then-pounce leadership let him squeak — barely — through the summer. The real crises already gathering won’t wait for him to stand back and calculate the precise moment to spring the next Do-or-Die Speech.

I think it’s a superb analysis of Obama’s whole approach to the presidency. Post-partisan was a fine strategy to articulate when it looked like the wingnuts would just wither away and die, but Obama’s own, inevitably partisan perspective on vitally important issues such as Iran, North Korea, education and healthcare must now be the guiding policies coming from the White House. You can’t compromise with lunatics – you shouldn’t even try, and he was elected to supplant the biggest lunatic administration of all. Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and others don’t speak for the vast majority of Americans, yet they’re still the voices we hear. Clinton gave in to them, Carter let himself be defined by them – Obama’s presidency is too important to fall into either trap.