Obama makes Americans wistful for George W. Bush

"I never thought I'd hear myself say it," one Democrat told me. "But Obama makes you feel that at least with Bush you knew where he was on something."

You won't read that in American newspapers ... but in Europe they are beginning to question Barack Obama's "coldness" and detached attitude toward Americans and the issues they face including the Fort Hood terrorist massacre.

The Telegraph took a look into the two presidents:

When Mr Bush's Republicans were defeated in the 2006 mid-term elections, it was the President himself who stepped up and declared that his party had received "a thumpin'". The Democratic defeats on Tuesday were not on anything like the same scale but Mr Obama acted as if nothing at all had happened.

Mr Obama had campaigned for Jon Corzine, New Jersey's Democratic governor, five times, twice just last Sunday. But when Mr Corzine lost by four points in a state Mr Obama won by 15 last year - a 19-point swing to Republicans - White House aides just shrugged.

In Virginia, which Mr Obama won by six points last year, prompting Democrats to declare an historic political realignment in the state, the Democratic candidate went down by 17 points in the biggest landslide since 1961 - a 23-point swing to the Grand Old Party.

It took Senator Mark Warner of Virginia to admit that his party "got walloped". For three days, Mr Obama maintained a studied silence about the results while his aides blamed them on local factors that had nothing to do with the President. And to think that it was Mr Bush who was always accused of being "in denial".

Our European neighbors took note of the President's strange national message of "condolence" after the Fort Hood terrorist massacre:

When the television networks cut to the President, viewers listened to him spend more than two surreal minutes talking to a gathering of Native Americans about their "extraordinary" and "extremely productive" conference, pausing to give a cheery "shout out" to a man named Dr Joe Medicine Crow. Only then did he briefly and mechanically address what had happened in Texas.

Even more telling was this observation:

Completely missing was the eloquence that Mr Obama employs when talking about himself. Absent too was any sense that the President empathised with the families and comrades of those murdered.

As to the Telegraph's suggestion that perhaps Barack Obama should try becoming more like President George W. Bush, I disagree. While Mr. Bush was heart-felt and sincere in his actions, I would prefer not to see a contrived Obama put on his acting cap and fake his way through, acting as if he cared. We have enough of that already.

Related post: Thank you former President George W. Bush and former First Lady Laura Bush