Pirate's Cove

They also notice that there’s a Typical Pattern to how he operates

President Obama does friends no favors

Barack Obama’s got a knack for turning trial balloons into piñatas, and then leaving his allies to pick up the mess.

The pattern: He floats a buddy for a top job early, deliberates long enough for the opposition to gather steam, defends his pal too late to do any good and then regretfully accepts defeat.

First it was Susan Rice, his choice for secretary of state. Now, Larry Summers has withdrawn from consideration to become the next chairman of the Federal Reserve. Their candidacies were so poorly handled that neither ever made it to the stage of being nominated, much less getting blocked — or voted down — by the Senate.

In the case of Summers, it was Democrats who doomed his candidacy.

“So much for no-drama Obama,” said Jim Manley, a senior director at QGA Public Affairs who worked for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “This was always going to be a tough vote. There was no slam dunk involved here. … Why would they want to go through that?”

The “no-drama Obama” is a myth, much like unicorns and fairies.

A larger question is of the president’s toughness. Liberal Democrats rallied against a Summers nomination. In another debate that never came up for a vote the White House could have easily lost, Obama was led into asking Congress for approval to bomb Syria. His summer-long fight with Russian President Vladimir Putin over NSA leaker Edward Snowden and the Syria issue has also hurt.

“It’s a consistent pattern where he says he’s going to do something, says he’s really going to fight for it, and then buckles the moment there’s any opposition,” said one veteran Democratic strategist. “It’s like the kiss of death if he wants if you for a job.”

It should be noted that Obama doesn’t always lose, but the pattern does apply to how he generally operates on most subjects more often than not. And even when he does win, he tends to engender bad feelings from one entity or another. But, I wouldn’t quite call it “buckling”, more like moving on in petulance, because those mean people refused to do as he dictates. He really doesn’t like people standing up to him.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.