NYT: Break out the weak Democrat meme

I'm guessing Helene Cooper gets paid by the article. This is a pathetic piece. That's all I'll say. Some selected spots:

The Label Factor: Is Obama a Wimp or a Warrior?

Like every Democratic president since John F. Kennedy, President Obama is battling the perception that he’s a wimp on national security.

[...]

And labels count, as a poll taken last August by the Pew Center for the People and the Press illustrates: When voters were asked which party could do a better job of dealing with terrorism, they expressed more confidence in Republicans than in Democrats, as they had consistently since 2002. The 2009 margin was 38 percent to 32 percent. But when asked which party could do a better job of making wise decisions about foreign policy, 44 percent chose the Democrats, 31 percent the Republicans.

[...]

But labels can stick, as Mr. Carter himself found out so well, and as the Republicans also know from their experience parrying the opposite stereotype — of cowboy-style recklessness, first under Ronald Reagan and later under George W. Bush (whose own father, oddly, was said to have suffered from a “wimp factor”).

[...]

Then there’s terrorism. Mr. Obama will also have to demonstrate some tangible action there, the experts say, to dispel the notion put forward by the Republicans that his plans to shut down the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, makes Americans less safe. The Christmas Day attempted plane attack over Detroit failed in many ways, but it succeeded in doing one thing: reintroducing the issue of terrorism into the American psyche. Now, Mr. Obama is under pressure to show that he considers fighting terrorism to be a priority.

The problem though, is that many of the steps he can take against terrorism — like intelligence co-operation, drone strikes and covert actions — are, by their very nature, often invisible. “He needs visible victories there, like hits on Al Qaeda leaders, so no one is able to put together a narrative that says he’s weak,” said David J. Rothkopf, a Clinton administration official and author of “Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power.”