Friday, June 11, 2010

Our man-child President

I think it's been obvious for a while that President Obama loves to jet off to Oslo or London or New York (date night!) on a whim and the taxpayer's dime. But when faced with a genuine crisis, well, here's some of what he did the first 50 days after the Deepwater Horizon explosion:

- Vacation in North Carolina.
- Vacation in Chicago.
- Numerous rounds of golf.
- Meeting with the New York Yankees.
- Meeting with UConn women's basketball team
- White House Correspondent's Association Dinner
- Meeting with Pittsburgh Steelers
- Meeting with U.S. World Cup soccer team
- Meeting with Duke men's basketball team
- Dinner and award ceremony with Paul McCartney

Who did he not have time to talk to during this critical period? The CEO of British Petroleum, presumably because he was not an ex-Beatle.

Now, only two weeks after "taking responsibility" for the federal response to the BP oil spill, Obama has decided that Congress deserves some blame. Well, not Congress, but certain members of Congress who hypothetically would have responded a certain way in Obama's self-serving scenario:

In an interview with POLITICO, the president said: "I think it’s fair to say, if six months ago, before this spill had happened, I had gone up to Congress and I had said we need to crack down a lot harder on oil companies and we need to spend more money on technology to respond in case of a catastrophic spill, there are folks up there, who will not be named, who would have said this is classic, big-government overregulation and wasteful spending."
That's what you get, America, when you elect a first-term Senator with no executive experience – somebody who has never faced any serious critical review from his glory days at Harvard until today. He's enjoyed the trappings of the Presidency until the moment he's asked to provide leadership, whereupon he'll make a stab at "taking responsibility" before falling back onto familiar defensive tropes, popularized by eight-year-olds.

"It's complicated?" No kidding, Sherlock. That's why you get the big house on Pennsylvania Avenue. Why don't you push off the Stevie Wonder concerts until after unemployment dips below 9%, OK? I know this is a new experience for you but: this is a real job.

Extra - Patterico: "Campaigner in chief."

More - Sister Soldjah: "This guy simply cannot handle criticism of any kind."

And this - Minuteman: "What a whiner."

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a difference six years makes. In 2004, when the DNC put out a fundraising letter pointing out that George W. Bush spent August 2001 on his ranch immediately after getting the "Bin Laden Determined to Strike" memo, at least one conservative New England blogger responded, "Why are Democrats such scumbags sometimes? Yeah, well we all know what Clinton was doing when he was supposed to be protecting the country, right?"

Blowjobs and Beatle dinners, bad. Brush clearing and barbeque, totally understandable.

Eric said...

Funny you should make that comparison since Obama declared the oil spill equal to 9/11 - before heading off for four hours of golf.

No word on which he insisted the slavish media "watch this drive."

Anonymous said...

Yeah, Obama should have flown down to the shore with a bullhorn and yelled threats at the oil. And then sold photos of himself on the plane.

fgfgfgfgfg said...

Here is President Obama "declaring the oil spill equal to 9/11":

"In the same way that our view of our vulnerabilities and our foreign policy was shaped profoundly by 9/11, I think this disaster is going to shape how we think about the environment and energy for many years to come. One of the biggest leadership challenges for me going forward is going to be to make sure that we draw the right lessons from this disaster."

Dr. Hermann Rorschach would approve.