Oh, man
Did you see this thing in the National Journal? Seems White House aides are concerned about damage to what they call Obama’s “leadership brand.” Yeah, fellas. What you have there is totally a branding problem.
[Obama] then launched into a long reply that previewed what is to come after Labor Day. It is then, he said, that he will propose a “very specific plan” on the economy. And if Congress does not adopt it, “then we’ll be running against a Congress that’s not doing anything for the American people, and the choice will be very stark and will be very clear.” He concluded his answer stating that “the other side is unreasonable. And you … don’t want to reward unreasonableness. Look, I get that.”
Excellent. Because we have slipped sideways into an alternate universe where blaming other people for you problems doesn’t make you sound like a whiny crybaby bitch.
Wait, what? Labor Day??!? That’s three weeks from now. After another Vineyard vacation. Three years wasn’t enough time to come up with some specifics we can kick around?
According to the two senior officials, the plan to arrest that decline is for Obama to no longer be seen as above the fray. While they believe Republicans were both wrong and unfair to claim the president had no plan to bring down the deficit, they know it hurt him. So they will try to show the president as having specific plans and then show him fighting for them.
Does the wording of this strike you as distinctly weird? Not that Obama will actually be doing certain things, instead they will try to show him doing things. Like they’re going get the NY Times to run a picture of him holding a piece of paper marked SPECIFIC PLANS and another picture of him putting up his dukes.
No more will the president be focusing primarily on issues that can attract bipartisan support and appeal to a Republican House. And no longer will he be so willing to let Congress work out the details on its own.
Oh, now I get it. The new plan is to alienate the one third or so of the country that likes Republican ideas and turn off the one third or so in the middle that likes happy clappy bipartisanship to appeal to the one third or so of the country that was bound to vote for him anyway.
He so smart.
August 17, 2011 — 9:52 pm
Comments: 33