Pass the Viagra

Fareed Zakaria offers his view of the President's performance on the oil spill. His is a rational assessment of a situation that is becoming more and more an opportunity to stir up emotions that accomplish nothing. He has a real concern that the Presidency itself is being damaged by all the media hoopla over the disaster:

What worries me is that we have gotten to the point where we expect the president to somehow magically solve every problem in the world, appear to be doing it, and to reflect our anger and emotion. This is a kind of bizarre trivializing of the presidency into some kind of national psychiatrist-in-chief.

I suspect part of the reason that there is so much gnashing of teeth over this spill is that it revealed there is no way we are going to be rescued, whether by the cavalry, the Marines, or God. A nation that prides itself on what it can do to fix problems cannot easily accept that this is out of our control. The land of The Duke and Dirty Harry appears to be impotent, with no little blue pill on the horizon to fix it.

My fellow Americans, cut the whining, hitch up your suspenders and get back to work!