How do you spell "leadership"? J-E-L-L-O

As you probably remember, Father Ted, pastor of the First Amalgamated Church of Poll-Reading (right next to the Waffle House in Columbus)

I had a Democrat friend today tell me that he felt "bad for Ted Strickland. Come on people... cleaning up after Taft and Dubya can't be easy." Yeah, almost 3 years in office, that's almost no time! Those mean Republicans were wrong to want to spend time with their families or constituents. They have no right to point out the hypocrisy of him saying that Republicans should work overtime to fix a problem that he helped cause, and then going up to Mansfield for a campaign stop—either 1 year too early for the 2010 election, or 3 years too late for 2006. You choose.

The problem with Strickland is not that he went down on a cup of Jell-O. The problem is that he is not a leader, he is a follower. Every time that Strickland gets criticized, he retorts "Oh yeah? Like you have any better ideas?" Even loyal Father Ted supporters are starting to wake up and demand more of their fearless leader.

That's really juvenile behavior, and it seems to be the entire Ohio Democratic Party's plan for deflecting criticism. However, if one party is the one in charge, it's not the opposition party's job to lead. It's their job to point out flaws in the plan and to provide an GASP! opposing view, and fight it out in the Battlefield of Ideas. Debate, compromise, argument, rhetoric... that's the kind of thing that the opposition is supposed to do. Not doing the job of leading for the leader.

On a more personal note, do you see how easily he lies? He does it without even pausing or making any verbal tics, like most people. If I were going to throw around labels, I'd say he was a psychopathic liar. But I'm not going to throw around labels.

On a related note, there is a Twitter petition going around aimed at Strickland, with hopes of getting his face out of the Jell-o bowl and into the driver's seat. Although, I have to say, Strickland refusing to be a leader is good for the Republicans, so maybe NOT signing it is a good thing, too. Hmmm...