From Monday’s Boston Globe piece on Michele Bachmann’s effort to reinsert herself into the New Hampshire GOP presidential primary picture:

Bachmann portrayed herself as a fighter who spent five years opposing [Barack] Obama’s initiatives in Washington.

That’s swell, except Obama’s only been president for two years and nine months. As for his two years as U.S. Senator, he had no initiatives, only a burgeoning history of being bored by political office.

Or detached – see this piece by New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin.

Nut graf:

The reports are not good, disturbing even. I have heard basically the same story four times in the last 10 days, and the people doing the talking are in New York and Washington and are spread across the political spectrum.

The gist is this: President Obama has become a lone wolf, a stranger to his own government. He talks mostly, and sometimes only, to friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett and to David Axelrod, his political strategist.

Everybody else, including members of his Cabinet, have little face time with him except for brief meetings that serve as photo ops. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner both have complained, according to people who have talked to them, that they are shut out of important decisions.

For a president who’s proven himself surprisingly tone-deaf (given his pitch-perfect 2008 campaign), that’s not good to hear.