Ex-TV Anchor: Obama 'Condescending to Women'

President Obama's recent outreach to women voters has won him strong support in polls, but former CNN and NBC anchor Campbell Brown says in an op-ed column published Sunday that the effort "so far has seemed maddeningly off point."

Brown wrote in The New York Times that Obama is "trying too hard" to win the women's vote. "He’s employing a tone that can come across as grating and even condescending. He really ought to drop it," she said. "Most women don’t want to be patted on the head or treated as wards of the state. They simply want to be given a chance to succeed based on their talent and skills."

Brown charged that the women she knows "couldn’t be further from the fictional character of Julia, presented in Mr. Obama’s Web ad, “The Life of Julia,” a silly and embarrassing caricature based on the assumption that women look to government at every meaningful phase of their lives for help."

Brown is married to Dan Senor, a Fox News contributor and adviser to Mitt Romney's campaign. He served as spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq under President George W. Bush.