But now in retrospect, what a weird week it was! From Obama's peevish lashing out at everybody at that presser (and how un-presidential is it to call the opposition party "hostage-takers"? so much for post-partisan politics, though we've never heard anything this blatantly hostile -- hey, CHANGE!) ... to goofy, elderly Vermont socialist senator Bernie Sanders ranting for 8 hours (somebody give him some Jimmy Stewart DVDs and send him home!) ... to the total unbelievability of Obama's other presser with Bill Clinton -- if we can even call it Obama's, since he bailed not five minutes into it and left us all the spectacle of Slick Willie pontificating at the podium as in years of yore. (See this snark.) I practically got whiplash with deja-vu. Well, if nothing else it was a press conference that was -- for once -- worth watching.
The whole incident looked horrible ... and isn't most of public relations about "optics"? And, possibly worst of all, Clinton looked and acted presidential, calm, confident, warm. Obama didn't. Truman's adage about the heat and the kitchen proved true again in spectacularly public fashion. Obama's turning into the Incredible Shrinking President. In fact, he's shrunk so much he literally became the President Who Wasn't There. He used his wife and a Christmas party as his excuse and fled the press conference. I'd never seen anything remotely like this. It was weird. It was embarrassing.
So I leave you with two thoughts:
- The whole thing reminded me of this prescient satire by Iowahawk from way back in 2008. Iowahawk, we are not worthy!
- You have GOT to see this new cartoon by those brilliant Taiwanese news animators. It just hit YouTube yesterday. Check out the Clinton version of the Bat Signal! The first time I saw this video, I laughed out loud.
No comments:
Post a Comment