President Obama: Flounderer-in-chief?

This is not a president who is in command of events. Events are in command of him.

President Barack Obama delivers a speech at the University of Cape Town on June 30 in South Africa.
(Image credit: Michelly Rall/Getty Images)

Six months into his new term, President Obama should be feeling pretty good. After all, the economy is looking up and Americans are more confident about their prospects. The job market is healing and housing prices are up double-digits over the past year. New cars are rolling out of showrooms at the fastest pace in nearly six years. There's nothing like that new car smell.

Yet to many folks in Washington and around the country, a different odor is discernible: It's one of panic, they say, the smell of a president who is floundering. He seems to know it himself.

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Paul Brandus

An award-winning member of the White House press corps, Paul Brandus founded WestWingReports.com (@WestWingReport) and provides reports for media outlets around the United States and overseas. His career spans network television, Wall Street, and several years as a foreign correspondent based in Moscow, where he covered the collapse of the Soviet Union for NBC Radio and the award-winning business and economics program Marketplace. He has traveled to 53 countries on five continents and has reported from, among other places, Iraq, Chechnya, China, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.