President Tin Cup

It’s August so you could be forgiven for thinking Thomas Friedman’s latest column offering pony-in-the-sky advice to Barack Obama is a parody or, perhaps, written by some Friedman-bot while the great moustache takes a week off from soliciting couthy advice from Intel executives and Cairo cab-drivers. Anyway, you see, apparently…

He’s Tiger Woods — a natural who’s lost his swing. He has so many different swing thoughts in his head, so many people whispering in his ear about what the polls say and how he needs to position himself to get re-elected, that he has lost all his natural instincts for the game. He needs to get back to basics. 

It’s crazy what’s happening in America today: We’re having an economic crisis and the politicians are having an election — and there is almost no overlap between the two. The president needs to bring them together. But that can only happen if he stops playing not to lose and goes for broke himself.