Frank Rich’s, How Obama Became Acting President

(Community Matters) Frank Rich, “Acting President”

What drew them instead was the raw power Mr. Obama has amassed: the power to start shaping events and the power to move markets, including TV ratings.

The Obama stampede is forcing Mr. McCain to surrender on other domestic fronts.

What was most striking about the Obama speech in Berlin was not anything he said so much as the alternative reality it fostered: many American children have never before seen huge crowds turn out abroad to wave American flags instead of burn them.

Once again he [McCain] displayed a tantrum-prone temperament ill-suited to a high-pressure 21st-century presidency. . . . comes off instead like the ineffectual Mr. Wilson, the retired neighbor perpetually busting a gasket at the antics of pesky little Dennis the Menace.

The election remains Mr. Obama’s to lose, and he could lose it, whether through unexpected events, his own vanity or a vice-presidential misfire.

No surprise to regular readers, for at least five years I’ve bemoaned the loss of 70 years earned goodwill during one nincompoop’s administration. Over a long dinner in our home with Bill Bradley, we discussed why Obama was the right man for these times. It isn’t only that the experience and strengths he offers are those exactly in demand at this time (constitutional scholar, grassroots organizing, legislative reform, health care legislation and hiring/firing the right people to run a record-busting successful enterprise, aka Obama ’08 campaign), it’s that he so visibly represents a 180 degree change to our own people as well as to the rest of the world. In my less depressed days, I’ve expressed the belief that we can earn back our goodwill – perhaps not sustainably as quickly as we lost it, but in a way that’ll allow us to move forward. The world truly wants America as a [not the only] beacon of dreams and hope. Obama represents this 180-degree change, passing of leadership to a new generation and America’s finally acknowledgment of a multicultural world where the ultimate positions of power are accessible to all citizens.