Well, then, what would you have him do? Pretend everything's ok, there's no reason for anyone in our country to be upset? Or pander and pretend to "feel people's pain," while making no real substantive proposals to change things in a meaningful way?

In order to get people to mobilize behind an agenda for real change, a politician has to tread a delicate line -- you have to acknowledge the depth of underlying problems, but then you have to maintain a sense of optimism about the possibility of accomplishing anything -- the classic example being FDR's "nothing to fear but fear itself." I recognize that it sounded like Obama was "blaming the victim" but I believe what he was getting at, what he meant, was an honest attempt to thread that needle between sensationalizing people's anxiety and dishonest pollyana-ism.