With all of the attention paid to the other three New York Times columnists with things to say about the Obama administration and the bailouts, it is refreshing to read what the fourth had to say on Sunday.

While Krugman, Dowd and Rich joined the "nattering nabobs of negativism" whining about all of the things Obama is doing wrong, followed closely on the heels by media bobbleheads,  who today pronounced laughter also off limits for the President -- see the complete list of Presidential no-nos at the end of the blog and add your own -- and the bloggerazzi, that delightful echo chamber of yum snarky goodness where if Krugman said it, by God or some guy named Larry, Darryl or Daryl, it must be true. In that crowded atmosphere is the Oracle of Things Kind of Reasonable, Thomas L. Friedman.

An Indian businessman he knows has encountered him on the streets of Manhattan and says Americans are behaving like an "immature democracy." Friedman suggests we all know what the businessman means:

We're in a once-a-century financial crisis, and yet we've actually descended into politics worse than usual. There don't seem to be any adults at the top -- nobody acting larger than the moment, nobody being impelled by anything deeper than the last news cycle. Instead, Congress is slapping together punitive tax laws overnight like some Banana Republic, our president is getting in trouble cracking jokes on Jay Leno comparing his bowling skills to a Special Olympian, and the opposition party is behaving as if its only priority is to deflate President Obama's popularity.

He continues...

I saw Eric Cantor, a Republican House leader, on CNBC the other day, and the entire interview consisted of him trying to exploit the A.I.G. situation for partisan gain without one constructive thought. I just kept staring at him and thinking: "Do you not have kids? Do you not have a pension that you're worried about? Do you live in some gated community where all the banks will be O.K., even if our biggest banks go under? Do you think your party automatically wins if the country loses? What are you thinking?"

If you want to guarantee that America becomes a mediocre nation, then just keep vilifying every public figure struggling to find a way out of this crisis who stumbles once -- like Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner or A.I.G.'s $1-a-year fill-in C.E.O., Ed Liddy -- and you'll ensure that no capable person enlists in government. You will ensure that every bank that has taken public money will try to get rid of it as fast it can, so as not to come under scrutiny, even though that would weaken their balance sheets and make them less able to lend money. And you will ensure that we'll never get out of this banking crisis, because the solution depends on getting private money funds to team up with the government to buy up toxic assets -- and fund managers are growing terrified of any collaboration with government.

And while Friedman does chide the President for not channeling some the nation's anger and angst into a Roosevelt style fireside chat, to reasure the nation, he doesn't dwell on the long list of political sins the President has supposedly committed.

Right now we have an absence of inspirational leadership. From business we hear about institutions too big to fail -- no matter how reckless. From bankers we hear about contracts too sacred to break -- no matter how inappropriate. And from our immature elected officials we hear about how it was all "the other guy's fault." I've never talked to more people in one week who told me, "You know, I listen to the news, and I get really depressed."

Well, help may finally be on the way: one reason we've been sidetracked talking about bonuses is because the big issue -- the real issue -- the president's comprehensive plan to remove the toxic assets from our ailing banks, which is the key to our economic recovery, has taken a long time to hammer out. So all kinds of lesser issues and clowns have ballooned in importance and only confused people in the vacuum. Hopefully, that plan will be out by Monday, and hopefully the president will pull the country together behind it, and hopefully the lawmakers who have to approve it will remember that this is not a time for politics as usual -- and that our country, alas, is not too big to fail. Hopefully ...

The plan was formally announced today. The stock market -- the barometer that is the perfect, exact and accurate measure of the President's dismal performance when it is down, but absolutely meaningless when it is up -- was way up. Almost 500 points up. Predictably, Krugman was quoted extensively. The politicians brayed and cackled, clucked and tut-tut-tutted. The bloggerazzi blogged that the Treasury Secretary was unfit to serve at the pleasure of the President, that he should be fired, that, in essence, because he proposed something they -- and more importantly the Almighty Krugman -- didn't like and had proclaimed was doomed to failure, the Secretary should be banned from Planet Earth.

And to insure that all was right in the world, laughter in the immediate vicinity of the Oval Office, Air Force One, Marine One, inside the borders of the continental United States, the country of Alaska, or the foreign country known as "Hawai'i was strictly prohibited. The President's illegal laughter was protrayed as nervous tick, a sure sign that he is cracking under the stress of the job, degrading to the majesty of the office of the President, and like shirtsleeves in the Oval office, simply not done. 

* - no jokes, no negative talk, no realistic talk, no positive talk, no working on more than one thing at a time, no working on just one thing at a time, no acknowledging the boneheads who criticize you, no NOT acknowledging the boneheads who critixize you, no answering media questions with complete sentences, no joking by Robert Gibbs in the WH Press Office, no sleeveless clothing  worn by your wife, no appearances on late night talks shows, no taking office your jacket in the Oval office, no being born in a foreign country. This list is by no means all inclusive. More items will be added after the President's second primetime news conference in 64 days.