IMG_7491, originally uploaded by Barack Obama.

Obama could have come in and blasted all the disasters perpetuated by Republicans in the last decade: wars, deficit spending, corporate corruption. He might have demanded single payer health care, and withdrawn all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and sliced the military budget by a third.

He could have spoke in the middle of a large ruined area of Detroit or Akron and asked why we spend billions overseas and let parts of America die. He might have told Wall Street that their ruination was OK, and let the free market, which so enriched them, take them down.

Instead, he was reasonable, bi-partisan, polite, willing to work with corporations, lobbyists, Hollywood, Wall Street and militarists to insure that the wealthiest and most powerful stayed that way through the Great Recession.

There is something cold, distant and lacking in the man. An empathy is missing that once seemed evident in his speeches. And both his supporters and enemies feel the same icy distance from this once promising leader. He is still articulate and poetic, but his words stand for nothing but a mirage of leadership.