Dealing with 'Obama fatigue'

Barack Obama has managed to turn himself into “the central figure in American politics,” said E.J. Dionne Jr. in The Washington Post, but his “extraordinary achievement” has come at a price. A recent Pew Research Center study found that 48 percent of those surveyed said they had heard “too much” about Obama, while only 26 percent said that about Republican John McCain. Obama’s challenge now is telling voters who he is while “moving the spotlight off himself.”

Too late, said Jed Babbin in Human Events. “Obama fatigue” has set in. Americans are tired of hearing Obama's “moralizing,” and his talk of how Americans “are a people of improbable hope,” whatever that means. Voters now know that Obama is a "prig," and their doubts will linger unless he shows another side in head-to-head debates.

Obama isn’t the only one suffering from all the attention focused on him, said Alister Bull in Reuters’ Tales from the Trail blog. McCain has been mercilessly blasting Obama with “a barrage of controversially negative advertisements,” and his audience seemed grateful this week when he managed to get through a 20-minute speech without badmouthing his rival.

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It’s a good thing Obama is spending this week on vacation in Hawaii, said Swaraaj Chauhan in blog The Moderate Voice. We could all use the break. One reason Americans get tired of their leaders “could be that they talk too much.” Whenever anyone goes on and on “the content gets diluted, and people begin to yawn.”