Obama: Acting presidential?

last updated 8 January 2015

It's time for Barack Obama to start acting presidential, said Richard Cohen in The Washington Post. His weak "posturing toward Iran" is just the latest proof that Obama is still acting like a candidate, instead of commander in chief. Instead of running around "appearing promiscuously on television," it's time for Obama to actually do something about threats like Iran's secret nuclear facilities.

Richard Cohen's criticism of Obama is "pretty odd," said Steve Benen in Washington Monthly. Obama's goal in disclosing—alongside British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy—Iran's secret nuclear-fuel plant was to put Tehran on the defensive and give the U.S. leverage ahead of this week's talks in Geneva, and he did just that. That's being presidential, even if it's not precisely what some "whining" pundits want.

Obama apparently wants the world to think he's issuing an ultimatum to Iran, said Doug Mataconis in Below the Beltway. But, as Cohen points out, President Obama has not come close to showing Tehran that he means business. The bottom line: Obama has shown himself to be "a pretty good Head of State but he’s failing as a Head of Government. Unfortunately, in the United States we need someone who can do both jobs at once."