Obama: reality may not bite yet, but it seems to be nibbling
Obama’s hit a bit of a rough patch lately.
He’s finding that changing Washington isn’t as easy as it sounded on the campaign trial. It’s been harder to get a pass from the press and public for his nominees than it was to get one for himself way back when he was running for president instead of actually having to be president.
It will be interesting to see how this novel notion of accountability affects Obama. Something seems to be making him rather tired, however. Yesterday he said as much on a visit to a local school:
“We were just tired of being in the White House,” the president candidly told the gleeful second-graders at Capital City Public Charter School.
“We got out! They let us out!” Mrs. Obama said as the kids and their teachers laughed.
Yes, yes, of course—they were joking. But it’s an odd jest to make, isn’t it? I think it may represent more than a little bit of the truth.
I worried about Obama’s stamina way back in May of 2007, when he offered being tired as an excuse for an early verbal flub. To the best of my knowledge, this vulnerability to exhaustion (and the need to offer it as an excuse) was the very first thing I noticed and wrote about regarding Obama:
Just as the Presidency is not for the shy or those tortured by ambivalence, just as it requires a certain amount of narcissism (perhaps more than is healthy in ordinary life), it also requires true grit and enormous””almost superhuman””endurance. And if the President doesn’t feel up to it all the time, he/she is supposed to shut up about it and not let others see.
The photo accompanying yesterday’s school visit showed Obama and wife reading to the children in the usual photo-op:
Remind you of anything? It did me. When I saw the picture, I couldn’t help but think of a day in 2001 only a few months after President Bush had become President.
As nearly everyone knows, he was reading to schoolchildren when notice of the terrorist attacks first came to him. He was widely criticized for waiting several minutes for further information from aides before reacting, and for certain actions in the first few hours afterwards that seemed in retrospect to be evidence of confusion and indecision on his part.
I always cut him a lot of slack, even back then when I was an opponent of his. I think he did a remarkable job of regrouping fairly quickly from news that must have been not only shocking, but truly unprecedented.
I do not wish anything even remotely resembling 9/11 on either the nation or on President Obama. But when I saw yesterday’s photo, I could not help thinking that the confusion of his first couple of weeks is hardly an indication that he would face a similar crisis with complete clarity, making split-second decisions that would be any better than Bush’s. Perhaps they would even be quite a bit worse.
[NOTE: Let’s hope Cheney is wrong about this prognostication.]
Obama is human.
The thing that strikes me Neo is that the left seems to have dehumanized conservatives and/or republicans and especially Bush/Cheney.
They are men who love their country – and so does Obama and are doing what THEY think is best for the country.
When I meet a negative and judgmental complainer person I immediately want to get out of the room that they are in. I can’t stand it. It sets me off.
Obama’s had some tough days lately and it strikes me that there was very little accountability or responsibility for his words during the campaign.
That has all changed.
Bush and Obama were presidents of all people. While Obama may have the “I won” attitude now. He must understand that there are other viewpoints.
It all comes down to the ideas/policies/solutions. If what is BETTER for America IS capital gains tax rate reductions or corporate tax rate reductions then it is IMPERATIVE that Obama look at these ideas for the good of the country.
I would like to see news stories to show that Obama is not just ‘visiting’ with conservatives but ‘listening’ to conservatives.
Visiting could mean that he is talking to conservatives but not listening.
Bush was vilified and called clueless because he didn’t jump up immediately and start running around like Henny Penny saying “The sky is falling”. If the truth be known (or remembered) it was Bush – against the wishes of his advisers (both civilian and military) who ordered Air Force One back to Andrews so he could get back to the white house and better command and control access. Before all the name calling started I thought to myself how well he handled it. Knowing he had competent people gathering information he took a “very few minutes” to finish reading the story so as not to upset the children.
RACIST!!!!
Fannie Mae Logic Bomb Would Have Caused Weeklong Shutdown
A logic bomb allegedly planted by a former engineer at mortgage finance company Fannie Mae last fall would have decimated all 4,000 servers at the company, causing millions of dollars in damage and shutting down Fannie Mae for a least a week, prosecutors say.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/01/fannie.html
So its inside just like Anthrax isn’t?
neo-neocon –
I don’t know how one could not recall the photo of President Bush on that terrible morning.
Looking at the Obama photo, however, makes me fearful. Obama is NOT President Bush. I have no confidence in how Obama would handle a Sept. 11th-type event.
It all makes me miss President Bush.
Deana
It is a shockingly similar photo.
I remember watching the footage early on, and my thought was that he (Bush) chose not to react strongly, in the same way that the paramedics do not rush when the ambulance comes. They are resolute and methodical, and not given to hysteria.
He had to put on the calm face for the world to see.
For Michael Moore to have twisted that is, I think, one of the worst things he did.
And I agree with Deanna.
Marines are trained to keep their bearing. Not to appear panicky or nervous. They’re trained at Basic to avoid the appearance of exhaustion and to certainly never admit it to civilians! I imagine Bush’s Air Force training emphasized similar behavior. Obama is already admitting weakness. Does it make him an inferior man? Certainly more whiney. lol
I’m not sure B Hussein Obama ever hoped to win more than the nomination. I am also not at all sure that he has the country’s best interests at heart. I rather fear the contrary.
His stress is apparently due to the tax problems his slithering, wormy, craven nominees have had to own up to. He is being found to be the Daleyesque figure sooner than anticipated.
I wish my country well. That does not mean I wish Obama well.
I think most people would say that they fear the possiblity of National Disaster to occur whith BHO at the helm. Everything that he has done thus far (in only 14 days) shows his inexperience and proves you cannot run a country like he did his campaign.
Remember how Bush was based over Katrina? Well what has BHO done for any of the people of Kentucky or Arkansas? The answer NOTHING. Hundreds of thousands of Poeple with no power in the midst of record lows (mind you all while Global Warming is the talk of the town) and Just yesterday FEMA shows up to “take a look”. Pathetic!!!
Suit. Empty.
Some assembly required.
Not that it will matter.
The complaint and opposition to Cheney’s (and by extension Bush’s) uncompromising stand on WOT tactics has too often revolved around the idea that they were unnecessary. In their heart of hearts, liberals believe that we could have gotten the same results without doing anything messy. Their evidence for this is blind faith – their hard-wired belief that if we’re just nice enough, the world will come around.
The number of progressives who have even asked themselves the question “What if Cheney is right? What if there was no other way?” seems to be rather small. It does seem to be suddenly occurring to the Obama administration. I hope he’s a quick study.
Assistant Village Idiot:
When you wrote “in their heart of hearts, liberals believe that we could have gotten the same results without doing anything messy,” it reminded me of the Updike quote in his Vietnam essay, here:
These privileged members of a privileged nation believed that their pleasant position could be maintained without anything visibly ugly happening in the world.
I completely agree with Deana. I wonder what this country will come to with Obama in.