The XX Factor: What women really think.

Obama as National Dad

Wash your hands. Fill up your tires. Don't stuff money in your mattress. "If you are considering buying a car," Obama said yesterday, "I hope it will be an American car."

As our national crises mutates and fills different corners of American life, Obama increasingly sounds like dad yelling down the driveway as his kid is driving away for college. "He is, I hate to say this, the father of the country," says Irwin Stelzer, director of the Center for Economic Policy Studies at the Hudson Institute.

Republicans, meanwhile, are increasingly filled with horror (or partisan glee) at how perfectly he is embodying their nightmare of Big Government. So, to continue the dad analogy, that would make them...the Deadbeat Uncle? The College-Bound Kid in the Car, rolling his eyes?