Frankly, President Obama does not seem like he was fully prepared to be President. His hubris may have gotten the best of him. He ignited real hope and became lucky: Hillary Clinton became overconfident, GWB became a bane as a lame duck, and John McCain self-destructed. Ergo Obama became the man. Like a true liberal, he relied on his brilliance and elite thinking with good intentions for being elected. This has now wrought him calamity. In politics, it can be most unforgiving.

Where is President Obama’s Carville or Rove or Atwater or kitchen cabinet like Reagan’s California friends and influential backers or even Carter’s Hamilton Jordan to be his path finder as the American political swamp begins to devour him? Obama, being a loner by nature, is now, as President, up against the forces of economic and political troubled waters. Who in his Cabinet or White House is taking hits for him?

The wrath and smite of an aggrieved people will shortly visit him unless Lady Luck returns. The sadness is his latent failure may beget or unleash the might of ugly extremists with all their mean-spiritedness, intolerance, bigotry, nativism, uncharitable attitude all wrapped around the flag and the visceral language of religious and patriotic righteousness. This is beginning to sweep aside even the responsible fiscal and security conservatives. Obama is no FDR, who was more a political animal of his day: a doer who surrounded himself with seminal thinkers at a time of dire crisis. Even President Lincoln, the self-educated loner at a horrific time, relied on his military chiefs to move forward to save the Union. His leadership flowed from the simplicity and genius of his words which reassured and guided his people. Whereas, President Obama sees himself as a true Athenian actor on a stage full of Wagnerian menaces and Cassandra-like shadows and at best some misguided Panglossian spirit.

Obama is not a disappointment. Perhaps he symbolizes a national frustration that the world is not an American ideal but a brutish reality. The Latino failure to understand the current national crisis will prevent us from being able to survive the impending vortex. Immigration as a litmus test and a primary political metric increasingly appears to be misplaced by many of our Latino leadership. For instance on Tuesday, Representative Gutierrez was arrested in front of the White House to protest the record number of deportations the Obama administration has executed. This kind of political statement in the middle of an economic meltdown may make it appear that we are singularly focused on immigration. Yet in this hour when the ship of state begins to list dangerously, where are the voices of our Hispanic chieftains on jobs, education and the general welfare? Their silence is impressive in opining on the national debt debate while the latest Pew Report alarmingly announces that Latinos have lost 66 percent of their wealth! This devastating statistic is clearly proof that our community is in a deep depression and not a recession. The hope can only be when and if our elected and non-elected leaders in fact open their mouths that they will readily improve the silence. The sound must be one of true leadership and not just cheering on the mismanagement of the nation.