Barack Obama, he mad
Did you watch Obama’s Very Cranky Presser yesterday? You should. Go on. I’ll wait.
One of the most inartful pieces of political theater ever. Somehow he took a fairly wise political compromise and turned it into a complete loser for himself.
He could have been just a leeeetle teensy bit gracious to the Republicans and come off as a reasonable man and a tough negotiator. Nope. He was petulant about Republican opposition right from the start, which somehow made it look like they had pwned him utterly.
He could have appealed to his base, explaining that a deal with this congress has to be a bzillion times leftier than any deal with the next congress could possibly be. Nope. He scolded them for being “sanctimonious” and “pure.”
He could have minimized the whole thing. You know, all this bill does is keep things the way the are for now. No big.
Nope. Somehow, he managed to alienate pretty much everybody, and look like a tooth-gritting, vein-throbbing lunkhead doing it.
I don’t get who he was trying to appeal to. “The American people” he kept invoking — presumably minus the Republican part of the American people and the leftmost section of the Democrat part of the American people. Which leaves — oh, I dunno — maybe a third of the actual American people?
President Sooper Genius not look so smart these days.
And if you don’t recognize the image I’m riffing on, you are an utter, utter Philistine. It’s this famous shot from the always spooky Diane Arbus. After she cut her wrists in the bath in 1971, there were persistent rumors that she had set up a camera on a tripod to film her own death.
December 8, 2010 — 6:02 pm
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