Every time I read a Dowdian screed grounded in the argument that President Obama "has never felt the need to explain or sell his signature pieces of legislation ... or stanch the flow of false information from the other side," I am compelled by the essential truth of the argument, and thus of the screed, yet I'm also reminded of the argument's far deeper but obscured indictment of the American electorate.
It's true. For about three years President Obama governed. Before he was elected president, he campaigned. But when he was elected, he governed; doubtless an old-fashioned idea of the presidency, but, reckless radical Kenyan socialist that he is, as president he governed nevertheless. He thought the electorate would notice.
Obama also thought the electorate was bound to notice that his chief opposition (from the right--not left--just to clarify) was a politically dishonorable syndicate of ill-tempered nincompoops who lusted not for a better America, but for raw power.
As we now know, both thoughts, or beliefs, were misplaced. The electorate--not all of it, obviously, but an unhealthy enough of it--regarded Obama's concentration on competent governance over a Bush-like concentration on perpetual propaganda as a presidential manifestation of aloofness and arrogance. This particularly influential electorate also managed to miss the beastly conspicuousness of congressional tea partiers' anarchic, nihilistic bloodlust and power-thirst.
In short, President Obama gave this electorate too much credit. He believed they could distinguish centralities from peripherals, the essentials from the frivolous, and the way forward from the path backward. He was outstandingly wrong, although such a misreading is a common defect of intellectual presidents.
At any rate, now that he's back to the emotional fireworks of campaigning, rather than indulging all that dull governing, perhaps the screed-prone children will love him again.