RoR: Forum

Disgusting. Obama has to be cognitively impaired.

Post 1

Friday, November 6, 2009 - 11:28am

What next? Is he going to say "Peeps got to represent"? He seems more interested in being "hip" and appealing to a vacuous youth culture than he is about acting like the commander and chief! You'd expect a President to use a little more professional decorum.

Post 2

Friday, November 6, 2009 - 2:37pm

Really, it was incomprehensible that Obama, when taking the stage, and knowing the available detail on the Fort Hood shootings, did not have the presence of mind to realize the importance of focussing immediately upon that issue. The national press was there. He had to know these would be his first remarks made available to the American people. Frankly, it is a rare failure of his political savvy, knowing what the people are expecting or wanting to hear.

I don't honestly believe that presidents (any president) are truly obligated to express remorse or offer words of solace and consolation whenever anything unpleasant comes up. It can certainly be overdone, and the reasons for sounding in don't have to follow any particular pattern. Almost anytime there is an unexpected death count of six or more from a cause other than serial killer, presidents are somehow expected to pipe in. The president's speaking about the sadness of such events doesn't change anything.

Yet there is an understandable desire to see our presidents take time from their schedules to connect with the victims and their families, and connect with us, to acknowledge and share the sadness of the events. It offers an improbable, but personal link between us, and the person elected to lead us. It also confers an additional personal trust to the president.

Most presidents understand this, do can share the emotion of these events with the rest of the country, will politically benefit from a respectful show of concern about the events, and make it their personal point to share their feelings, offer words of solace on these events.

Obama amazingly failed to recognize what is expected.

Maybe it wasn't enough 'on message' for him, so he wanted to get 'his message' out first.

jt

Post 3

Friday, November 6, 2009 - 2:50pm

Jay I get what you're saying about Presidents chiming in on every tragedy that occurs. But I think in this particular case we are talking about a massacre of soldiers on U.S. soil, and the President is their commander and chief. Considering his position as leader of the armed forces, I think offering condolences would be the honorable thing to do, and to do so sincerely and respectfully. That is assuming he actually cares about the title of commander and chief.
(Edited by John Armaos on 11/06, 3:17pm)

Post 4

Friday, November 6, 2009 - 5:27pm

This is not a failure of Obama's political savvy. It's a failure of his handlers. Obama is an actor. Not a director, and certainly not a writer, just an actor, and one with a very limited range.

If you watch his full performance, you will see that Obama began with some semi-scripted comments about the Interior Department conference whose closing he had attended. He basically gave a pep speech to his own subordinates, who, expecting to hear him speak about the Fort Hood Jihadi, were at first shocked and didn't respond with applause to his out of place campaigning. Campaign mode is natural, in character for him.

Sensing that the audience was warming up, he then sent his "shout out." This was obviously not scripted - it was him. One could say that it was the him that he has carefully constructed. It was affected, an acquired habit meant to make him look cool. Obama didn't grow up saying such things as "a shout out." (Indeed, the term is first recorded in 1990, when he was thirty, and already a lawyer out of Yale. And it is highly doubtful he heard it even that early. How old werer you when you first heard that term?) Like most leftist academics of white descent, his use of childish fashion is an act, the verbal equivalent of Michael Moores' baseball cap and Susan Blackmore's rainbow hair.

Then came his comments on the shooting. Obama's demeanor changed in a flash, like that of a chameleon, or of Bill Clinton when he noticed the cameras on him at Ron Brown's funeral. And notice that now the sound is not stunned applause - it is the click of camera shutters. Did the press photograph Obama once during his pep rally? Did they get a shot of him during his shout out remark? Was that not news? Why would the press not want to portray that image of him?

Obama is acting a part. He has his screenwriters. He has his camera men. The performance only appears spontaneous. The press and the politicians have been practicing this sort of theater since the presidency of John Kennedy. Obama is not a president. He just plays one on TV.

(Edited by Ted Keer on 11/06, 5:57pm)

Post 5

Monday, November 9, 2009 - 12:36pm

John,

I do agree... expressing condolences is even more... is particularly important in this case, and for the precise reasons you mention. I brought up the other, i suppose, only because this has become an expected part of politics even when the inciting event is far removed from anything even remotely within the government's control. In a way, some of this stepping up and offering of condolences almost seems to suggest that somehow the government is or should be involved. A mad gunman runs into a school and shoots 20 students - awful, of course. A national issue? Only by extension, supposition, and great analysis.

Ted,

You are probably right. He is a far more scripted president than any we've had. Yet that is probably true even for brightest and most responsible candidates today (are there any of those really left?). He still led out with the original script, a grand faux pas, before shifting to the subject everyone was concerned about.

Shout out? First I heard the expression was when I read the article. Sounds like a teen-aged expression.

jt

Post 6

Monday, November 9, 2009 - 6:56pm