WE'RE QUOTING MAUREEN DOWD? – AT 8:32 A.M. ET:  Yes, you read it right.  We have stooped to this level.  But she wrote an absolute gem of an op-ed piece about Obama, and when Maureen is good, she's very good indeed.  The title of the piece is:

                      Captain Obvious Learns the Limits of Cool

Now you see why I'm quoting her.  She proceeds:

Our president came down from the mountaintop.

He had applied the freshness of his independent thought to the critical matters at hand. He had convened his seminar, reviewed the reviews, analyzed the intelligence every which way, thought anew about everything, and lo and behold, he finally emerged to tell us some stuff we already knew.

We are under attack.

There is evil in the world.

Yemen is a dangerous place that breeds people who want to kill us...

...The sun rises in the east.

Two plus two equals four.

“We must do better,” Captain Obvious said Thursday at the White House, “in keeping dangerous people off airplanes while still facilitating air travel.”

And a lot of other stuff we already knew.

No Drama Obama is reticent about displays of emotion. The Spock in him needs to exert mental and emotional control. That is why he stubbornly insists on staying aloof and setting his own deliberate pace for responding — whether it’s in a debate or after a debacle. But it’s not O.K. to be cool about national security when Americans are scared.

Dowd gets in some required barbs against President Bush and the Republicans, but then applies the paddle once more to our student-government president:

He’s so sure of himself and his actions that he fails to see that he misses the moment to be president — to be the strong father who protects the home from invaders, who reassures and instructs the public at traumatic moments.

He’s more like the aloof father who’s turned the Situation Room into a Seminar Room.

Ouch, and more ouch.

And is is from a liberal columnist at The New York Times.  May she stay employed.

January 12, 2010