Drew Westen, an Emory U. professor of psychology and sometime consultant to Democrats, asks a pertinent question in today’s NYT: What Happened to Obama?

Like most Americans, at this point, I have no idea what Barack Obama — and by extension the party he leads — believes on virtually any issue. The president tells us he prefers a “balanced” approach to deficit reduction, one that weds “revenue enhancements” (a weak way of describing popular taxes on the rich and big corporations that are evading them) with “entitlement cuts” (an equally poor choice of words that implies that people who’ve worked their whole lives are looking for handouts). But the law he just signed includes only the cuts. This pattern of presenting inconsistent positions with no apparent recognition of their incoherence is another hallmark of this president’s storytelling. He announces in a speech on energy and climate change that we need to expand offshore oil drilling and coal production — two methods of obtaining fuels that contribute to the extreme weather Americans are now seeing. He supports a health care law that will use Medicaid to insure about 15 million more Americans and then endorses a budget plan that, through cuts to state budgets, will most likely decimate Medicaid and other essential programs for children, senior citizens and people who are vulnerable by virtue of disabilities or an economy that is getting weaker by the day. He gives a major speech on immigration reform after deporting a million immigrants in two years, breaking up families at a pace George W. Bush could never rival in all his years as president.

[snip]

The real conundrum is why the president seems so compelled to take both sides of every issue, encouraging voters to project whatever they want on him, and hoping they won’t realize which hand is holding the rabbit. That a large section of the country views him as a socialist while many in his own party are concluding that he does not share their values speaks volumes — but not the volumes his advisers are selling: that if you make both the right and left mad, you must be doing something right.

This inconsistency is what drives his supporters (or at least this supporter) absolutely nuts. The man gives good speeches, although they’re often filled with weasel words. He seems to want to be all things to all voters, which is impossible in the current political environment; doing so emboldens his enemies and frustrates his friends.

Take a leaf from TR and FDR, Mr. President. Learn who your enemies are (and they are your enemies) and name them. Give up the idea that there’s a bipartisan solution to the country’s every problem. Lay out a plan and campaign on it. Demand the voters give you Democratic majorities in order to get the plan accomplished. No more telling voters that Boehner, McConnell and the Tea Party are all good guys who want to work with you. They don’t.

Grow a damned spine.