http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/04/08/bow/print.html
Camille Paglia from the liberal Salon.com reports on Obama's floundering:
Arriving at the White House, he understandably stayed in his comfort zone by bringing old friends and allies with him -- a team that had had a fabulous success in devising the hard-as-nails strategy that toppled the Clintons, like crumbling colossi, into yesterday's news. But these comrades may not have the practical skills or broad perspective to help Obama govern. Like Shakespeare's Prince Hal ascending the throne, Obama may have to steel his heart and banish Falstaff and the whole frat-house crew.
Obama's staffing problems are blatant -- from that bleating boy of a treasury secretary to what appears to be a total vacuum where a chief of protocol should be. There has been one needless gaffe after another -- from the president's tacky appearance on a late-night comedy show to the kitsch gifts given to the British prime minister, followed by the sweater-clad first lady's over-familiarity with the queen and culminating in the jaw-dropping spectacle of a president of the United States bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia. Why was protest about the latter indignity confined to conservatives? The silence of the major media was a disgrace. But I attribute that embarrassing incident not to Obama's sinister or naive appeasement of the Muslim world but to a simple if costly breakdown in basic command of protocol.
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/04/08/paglia-obamas-floundering/
Hotair.com responds:
Paglia starts off the answer to her correspondent by stating that the buck stops with the President, but then blames his Chicago-based staff for most of the stumbles and gaffes. Unfortunately, that’s just not accurate. If protocol has run off the rails, and the bow to Abdullah demonstrated that very clearly, then Obama’s failure to staff his White House Office of Protocol is the cause. The problem is not that Obama’s been cocooned; it’s that Obama has no executive experience, and it’s showing very clearly.