Webster's dictionary defines "leading" as "providing direction or guidance."
While the United States military was carrying out his orders in Libya, President Obama was traveling with the First Lady, their kids and his mother-in-law on the way to a 5 day jaunt that included a sightseeing photo-op in Rio. To this day, we know a lot more about President Obama's opinion on the NCAA Tournament than what he intends to accomplish with our intervention in Libya.
President Obama has been similarly detached in dealing with the budget crisis. After spending the first two years of his term on an unprecedented borrowing and spending binge, the President walked away from the findings of the Budget Commission that he created. Instead of putting forth any plan for solving the current budget crisis and the entitlement crisis right on the horizon, President Obama has chosen to spend his time hosting conferences on school bullying.
President Obama hasn't proposed a single idea about how to address rising oil prices and our dependence on foreign sources of oil, other than to lecture about the need for "green energy."
On the most important issues facing the American people today, President Obama has appeared disengaged. As a former constitutional professor, he should be expected to know that the president is the head of government, not just the head of state. Instead, President Obama has demonstrated an unbecoming propensity to complain about spilled milk and try to walk away from it, rather than taking a leadership role in cleaning it up.
Today, with storm clouds brewing on fiscal, economic, energy and national security fronts, we have a president content to vote "present" on the most pressing issues facing our country. We saw the manifestation of feckless American leadership in 1979 with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Iranian hostage crisis, and the economic recession of the early 1980's. We saw it again 9 months after Bill Clinton left office. Let us hope that history does not repeat itself.
