But for now, I’d like to post here part of a comment I wrote there in response to someone who claimed that Obama had given away power because, or partially because, he had no goals.

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Obama has no goal, you say. OK, but did you experience him that way when he was RUNNING for president? I did not. I saw him as very gifted at expressing goals and inspiring millions of people to join with him to work to achieve them. “Yes we Can!” And if indeed Obama was able to lead like a man on a mission then, then it should not be difficult for him to find a mission to define and to lead the way toward, just as in the campaign, under the new circumstances of the presidency. FDR did that in a previous time of crisis, and that kind of leadership really mattered when it came to how America navigated through the two cataclysmic challenges of the FDR era.

America had NEED for such leadership then, and lucked out with FDR. This is a time of a different kind of wreckage –moral, legal, intellectual– to go with the two wars and the terrible economic conditions. It requires leadership that does for America what FDR did during an earlier time of crisis. But this time against a different constellations of challenges. All of which added together make it very important, for the country, that Obama absolutely maximizes his power to shape the political process and political environment. Like FDR did.

No one can lead in the way that’s needed but the president. It just doesn’t happen that way in America. It’s Obama that leads us to implement valuable solutions to our problems and to prevail over those who work to degrade and destroy, or it’s nobody.

So Obama gets attacked, and he lets his attackers profit at his expense. There’s one of those problems in Obama’s refusal thus far to grab the potential of his office, as a vehicle for his gifts, that maximize his power and influence. Not striking back at his attackers in the appropriate way and to the appropriate degree: highlighting the darkness at work.

FDR who said, of those forces that attacked him, “I welcome your hatred.”

We need Obama to take the reins of power with zest and creativity and a drive to move things the way he wants them to go, for the good of the nation.

Like FDR did.

We need to summon Obama to work through whatever it is within him that accounts for that “mystery” of his giving away his power. Work it through at least well enough to fight the good fight, using his gifts to the full, with a zest for prevailing, as FDR had.

We need him to lead his allies vigorously to achieve good things, defeat his attackers by defending the good against them. And to connect at a feeling level with the American people, coming across as a man on a mission, inspiring average people to join him in supporting that mission, and connecting heart to heart –as FDR did in his Fireside Chats.

Time to mature past that ambivalence of really claiming the right to dominate the landscape, as FDR did for so many years.