Is Lady Gaga a Better Politician Than Barack Obama?

A piece at Mother Jones asks the question that's the caption of this post and then looks at Barack Obama's indifference - or whatever the Hell you want to call it - when it comes to any kind of forceful leadership on basically anything, be it health care reform, DADT repeal or whatever. It's something that is driving me to alternating despair and anger. Especially because it is so unnecessary. Candidly, I believe that it is this near total abdication of leadership by Obama which is a prime reason that the Democrats' prospects look so bleak on November 2, 2010. In 2008, voters sought a strong leader and it is increasingly obvious that we got something totally different. Obama makes Jimmy Carter almost look like a forceful president. Here are column highlights:
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The repeal of DADT was one of President Barack Obama's key campaign promises—one that he repeated in his first State of the Union address earlier this year. Now it's a promise that may well wither, especially if Republicans gain control of the House in November. But as usual, the White House did little to publicly pressure Collins, Snowe, or Brown. Obama spent the day before the vote at a fundraiser in Pennsylvania and did little to draw attention to the upcoming vote and the GOP's intrasingence. The White House wouldn't even answer the New York Times' questions about the bill. Vice President Joe Biden, according to the White House, did call Snowe. But Obama did no lobbying of his own. Instead, the pressure politics were left to someone who's never been elected to public office: a 24-year-old New Yorker named Stefani Germanotta—a.k.a. Lady Gaga.
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While Obama was raising money for Democratic Pennsylvania Senate candidate Joe Sestak, who trails in the polls, Gaga was in Maine, crusading for DADT repeal. The previous week, she had created a YouTube video addressed to the whole Senate that urged repeal. At the time of the vote on Tuesday, it had nearly 1.7 million views.
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All this suggests the White House isn't particularly enthusiastic about DADT repeal—at least not at the moment (even though large percentages of Americans, including majorities of conservatives and Republicans, support repeal). After all, the administration demonstrated no interest in engaging in the kind of tough, on-the-ground combat mounted by Lady Gaga. This was reminiscent of health care reform battle.
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This week, Lady Gaga did her best with the ladies from Maine. She didn't turn them, but she did succeed in putting them on the hot seat. And after all, she's just a pop star, not the president. But the next time the White House wants to break a filibuster, it might consider going Gaga.