As a thought experiment, try to imagine that the President Obama is in possession of at least as much of each of the virtues necessary for great leadership as you are. Here's a list of the most important leadership virtues I can think of, not necessarily in order of importance: wisdom, intelligence, honesty, courage, compassion, justness, generosity, energy, passion, and humility.
Now, how in hell could it be possible that a person who possesses each of those characteristics in at least as great a quantity as you, can time and time again make decisions that you can plainly see are foolish, stupid, cowardly, corrupt, cruel, unjust, selfish, lazy, uninspired and arrogant?
If we were to take away (just for the sake of argument, I remind you) the possibility that President is lacking in any of those virtues, then what could possibly explain the fact that you have repeatedly observed him to make decisions that evince a character that is either foolish or stupid or cowardly or corrupt or cruel or unjust or selfish or lazy or uninspired or arrogant or some combination thereof?
Well, there are at least two parties to observation there is that which is observed and that which does the observing. Observations result from some characteristic of that which is being observed, some characteristic of that which is doing the observing or some characteristic of the medium by which information passes from observed to observer.
So, if you, as an observer of President Obama, perceived him as possessing some or all of the vices listed above and somehow you learned from an unimpeachable source (remember: this is strictly a thought experiment!) that President Obama, rather than possessing the aforesaid vices, was instead in possession of a full measure of each of the corresponding virtues, you would have to ask yourself "what is wrong with my ability to observe that caused me to see the President as so lacking in the necessary virtues for leadership?"
I suppose there could be any number of ways that you are a flawed observer, maybe you're prejudiced, maybe you're insane, maybe you're a bad person who doesn't know virtue when you see it.
But my best guess is that the answer would be that you just aren't working with the same information he is.
I don't know about you all, but I've personally found that problems look a hell of a lot different to me when I'm the one in charge of solving them than they do when I'm tackling them from an academic viewpoint or just offering opinions as a spectator.
I find that when I really get in there and work a problem, resolution often hinges on getting past some obstacle that I didn't anticipate at the outset. Sometimes what I thought would be the hard part practically takes care of itself and something that seemed insignificant before I got down to work ends up being the critical issue that threatens to undermine the whole project.
For one example of how this dynamic might have played, lets look at the stimulus: the liberal economic concensue is we need to do something really really big and we need to do it really really quickly. So the pointy heads do the math and they say: better do a 1.5 to 2 trillion stimulus and it needs to get passed in under 8 weeks and it should primarily be comprised of deficit spending not tax breaks.
Well, that shouldn't be a problem since Democrats have the White House, majorities in both houses of congress and 59 seats in the Senate. Oh but wait, Joe Lieberman, I-CT, is being a prick about it. Oh and Norm Coleman is keeping Al Franken tied up in court. Oh, and the Republicans are going to filibuster the damn bill. But we do have 3 Republican senators who are willing to break ranks if you shrink the package down and devote a substantial amount of stimulus to tax cuts. So if we do just enough to get Lieberman and 2 out of those three Republicans on board we can pass a stimulus. Oh, hey we just got a call from Ben Nelson, he says Arlen Specter and Olympia Snowe are on board for a $500 billion stimulus if it's half tax cuts. No way! That's not good enough. Try to get them on board for a trillion with a quarter tax cuts. No dice Mr. President. Tick! Tock! Tick! Tock! Unemployment is skyrocketing, the stock market is collapsing, we are on system overload. We have to act immediately. Fuck! Fine tell them $850 billion and 1/3 goes to tax cuts, but that's my bottom line. We did it Mr. President! We did it! A bill will be on your desk by President's day. God I just hope its enough. Tim Geithners' on line 2, it seems that we're likely to have a run on the banks if we don't do something major by the end of the week.
That is an a imaginary scenario, informed by my unresearched recollection of what transpired at the beginning of 2009. I'm sure it was a million times more chaotic and stressful than that.
If the President had decided to push for a better stimulus, we might not have gotten a deal at all, or it might have taken several more weeks to get a slightly better deal but the lost time could have damaged the economy in ways that the additional money could not offset. I honestly don't know what would have happened. The point is, neither do you. We all know that we would have been better off with a larger stimulus. What we don't know is whether we would have been better off if the President had pushed for a bigger stimulus. For all we know if the President had drawn a line in the sand and pushed for a bigger stimulus we'd be worse off today.
And the bigger point is, President Obama is the President we elected to represent our point of view as Democrats. We're all working with imperfect information. We can't know exactly what he knows or see exactly what he sees. Not because he's some 11-dimensional think, but because that is just how the world works. So, why don't we all give our guy the benefit of the doubt.