Do the Obama people know they won?

No one with a political brain can disagree with the political gifts President Obama has. He and his staff ran a masterful campaign in 2008. Howevever, it seems the President and his staff do not realize that they have the power. The President and his people are still in campaign mode and have missed somehow how being the President of the United States is different from running for the job.

A candidate for President of the United States can throw around all sorts of political jabs. So can his staff. But, once the election is over, and one becomes the President of the United States, things change. There is a difference between running for President and being President.

First, the President of the United States is President of all the people. As such, he should find tolerance for voices that disagree and dissent from him. Further, as President of the United States, the President and his staff have to focus on things that matter and real solutions to things like Afghanistan, the economy, health care and the like. There is no time on the agenda of sucessful Presidents of the United States for the petty or the trivial.

That is why the Obama Administration's recent moves against Fox News and even against some bloggers is puzzling. Not since the paranoid days of Richard Nixon has a sitting President of the United States had his staff so fixated on a news outlet. Nixon was after the New York Times and the Washington Post. Obama is after Fox News, some radio commenatators and blogs.

Some might contend that President Obama and his team go after such media outlets because the President can not get anything of substance done and has to campaign against some sort of boogie men. Fair enough. However, VUI sees it simply as stupid politics.

That is right, stupid politics. The people around the President just do not get that they are in power. They do not realize the asset that they have in the President. Instead, they flounder around and try to portray some news channel as out to get them.

People who seemed so smart a year ago look boneheaded, and the numbers prove it, as polls have President Obama hovering at or below 50 percent. By most conventional accounts, the Obama Presidency is in trouble.

Here is some unwanted advice on how to fix that. First, Obama needs to actually lead on the big issues. The notion of letting Congress work out health care is a bust. People are looking for Presidential leadership on that issue and other major issues. Whether they agree or disagree with the President's point of view, people are not going to support a guy who defers to Congressional members that they have never heard of.

Further, Obama has to let the petty things like the Fox News spat go. The President of the United States should be strong enough to endure dissenting voices he sees. Afterall, George W. Bush did not attack MSNBC on a daily basis. There is something beneath the office when a President and his team pick fights with members of the media. That old Nixon paranoia comes to mind.

Right now, the President of the United States is at an important political crossroads. People still like him and his family personally. Yet, people are tiring of his lack of leadership and dignity in picking his political fights. Barack Obama is the President of the United States. With that comes an obligation to lead to be above some things. With the actions of the Obama Administration over the past few weeks, do the Obama people know that they won and that their guy has the power and that with that power comes responsibility to represent all the people? Who among them dares to say to the President, "act like the President of the United States."