EXTRAORDINARY PIECE - AT 8:02 P.M. ET:  If there's required reading for today, this is it.  We've written here before that British writers have done some of the best reporting in the last year on America politics, as many of their American counterparts have remained deep in the tank.

This piece, by Tony Harnden of London's Telegraph, is making its way around the internet, and has already been quoted by some of the more courageous American writers.  It deals bluntly with Obama, and his problem connecting with his own country.  Expect more like this: 

During the election campaign, Barack Obama's cool detachment was a winning quality, the "No Drama Obama" a welcome contrast with the "Mr Angry" John McCain, never mind the hot-headed "I'm the decider" President George W Bush.

A year into his presidency, however, Mr Obama seems a curiously bloodless president. If he experiences passion, he seldom shows it. It is often anyone's guess as to whether an event or issue truly moves him.

Ah, well said.  The only thing that moves him is something about...him.

In a sign that the Obama honeymoon truly is over, I began to hear this week the first stirrings of a wistfulness about Mr Bush. "I never thought I'd hear myself say it," one Democrat told me. "But Obama makes you feel that at least with Bush you knew where he was on something."

The light goes on over American heads:  President Bush, despite his failings, stood for something.  And, you know, maybe it was even something noble.

When Mr Bush's Republicans were defeated in the 2006 mid-term elections, it was the President himself who stepped up and declared that his party had received "a thumpin'". The Democratic defeats on Tuesday were not on anything like the same scale but Mr Obama acted as if nothing at all had happened.

The president has the same talent as the old Soviet leaders - the ability to airbrush unpleasantries right out of the picture.

More serious perhaps was Mr Obama's strange disconnectedness over the Fort Hood massacre of 13 soldiers by an Army major and devout Muslim who opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, had praised suicide bombing and shouted "Allahu Akbar" as he opened fire.

Maybe Mr Obama had been reading the American press, much of which somehow contrived to present the atrocity as a result of combat stress due to soldiers going on repeated war deployments (though Major Nadal Hasan had not been on any) and therefore, no doubt, Mr Bush's fault.

Of course.  It was caused by BUSH (!!).  No doubt about it.

When the television networks cut to the President, viewers listened to him spend more than two surreal minutes talking to a gathering of Native Americans about their "extraordinary" and "extremely productive" conference, pausing to give a cheery "shout out" to a man named Dr Joe Medicine Crow. Only then did he briefly and mechanically address what had happened in Texas.

This has now become, on the internet at least, one of the most famous incidents in the Obama presidency.  But the networks hurried to edit the tape to make it appear that Obama had addressed Fort Hood first.  it was deceptive editing.

It was a reminder that for the past 16 years Americans have had two Presidents who would often extemporise and express emotion. President Bill Clinton could certainly "feel your pain" while Mr Bush sometimes struggled to hold back tears. Mr. Obama is more like President George Bush Sr., who famously communicated his concern for people by blurting out: "Message - I care."

And the unkindest cut of all regarding Obama:

It could do him good to show he has a bit of fire in his belly. Perhaps he might make a decision or two based on gut instinct and deep conviction. In other words, maybe he should try being a bit more like Mr Bush.

COMMENT:  There, he said it.  He actually said it.  Be more like Bush.  It's time someone said it.  Some of the British journalists are doing great work.

November 8, 2009