If All You Have is a Hammer...

The Only Implement in Maureen Dowd's Toobox

Maureen Dowd sees the world in black and white (the hammer).  She assumes everyone else sees the world the same way (the nail).  So when she brings this parochial view to judge a President who is capable of nuance and declares that "Our president likes to be on both sides at once" she commits a serious logical fallacy.

Because when all you see is binary, nuance is lost on you.

As a community organizer, Obama developed impressive empathetic gifts. But now he is misusing them. It’s not enough to understand how everybody in the room thinks. You have to decide which ones in the room are right, and stand with them. A leader is not a mediator or an umpire or a convener or a facilitator.

Dowd has never worked in the real world with real bosses who have to negotiate between competing views.  Her vision is of an authoritarian President, like Dick Cheney, says more about her psychological daddy fixation hang-ups than it does about Obama's skills.

Why does she still have a job?