Why Obama snubbed the troops: no photo op allowed

Hot Air ^ | 7:21 am on July 25, 2008 | Ed Morrissy

[MovementConservative]

NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski and Courtney Kube get the skinny on the abrupt cancellation of Barack Obama’s visit to Landstuhl and Ramstein yesterday. The campaign tried to excuse it by claiming that it wouldn’t be appropriate to visit while on a campaign-funded portion of his trip, but that wasn’t the real problem. When Obama found out he couldn’t use the visit as a photo op, he canceled:

One military official who was working on the Obama visit said because political candidates are prohibited from using military installations as campaign backdrops, Obama’s representatives were told, “he could only bring two or three of his Senate staff member, no campaign officials or workers.” In addition, “Obama could not bring any media. Only military photographers would be permitted to record Obama’s visit.”
The official said “We didn’t know why” the request to visit the wounded troops was withdrawn. “He (Obama) was more than welcome. We were all ready for him.”

In fact, those same rules applied for the CODEL trip to Iraq and Afghanistan. They serve to keep politicians from exploiting military facilities for political reasons, and to ensure that all visitors get treated fairly. Andrea Mitchell, also of NBC, complained of this very issue during the earlier visits with the troops when she told Chris Matthews that the media couldn’t get access to Obama when visiting troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This makes the decision track very clear. Obama and his team set up the visits to military installations before going overseas. After seeing how the media got excluded in Iraq and Afghanistan, they decided it wasn’t worth traveling to Ramstein and Landstuhl to visit the severely wounded troops because they couldn’t bring the campaign and get the photo ops they wanted. Instead, Obama went shopping in Berlin.

As I wrote yesterday, that’s certainly a revealing set of priorities for a man who wants to lead these troops as Commander in Chief.

[MovementConservative]

This really makes me mad.

[Jeff Head]

He snubbed the troops during the entire trip. Emails coming out of Afghanistan and Iraq indicate that many troops were simply passed by so he could make his photo ops and the whole thing was one big photo op farce and nothing more.

He is not visiting troops wounded in iraq because he does not have the guts to go to people he has spurned and where he has taken the position that the surge, which they have herocially participated in and won out over the enemy, have been so successful when Obama said we should not have done it, that it would make things worse, and even now, after it is clear that it has worked and led to victory, that he would not choose to support it if he had it to do over again.

Underneat all the hype and glitz of his trip, he is a not very well spoken (unless reading other's words on a teleprompter), abject marxist and militant anti-America who is not worthy to tie the bootlaces of these heroic volunteers.

CHOOSING THE NEXT PRESIDENT

BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA - CHANGE YOU CAN COUNT ON, BUT DON'T WANT

THE AUDACITY OF TRUTH ABOUT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA

[SumProVita]

THIS sounds much more likely to be the truth.....and no one should be surprised.

[Menehune56]

Obama’s European adventure is quite revealing about what type of president he’d be. I shudder at at the thought.

[Dustbunny]

The fear that this man, who has absolutely no experience, will become POTUS and will make the Jimmy Carter presidency look good. It is starting to give me nightmares.

[Always Right]

In contrast with Reagan, who would go out of his to avoid turning situations like these into a photo op.

Between Him and the Kids
Passing up the perfect photo-op.

Back to the President Reagan Page

February 06, 2004, 9:20 a.m.
By Peter Robinson

EDITOR’S NOTE: This vignette is excerpted from How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life.

The incident I always considered the best illustration of Reagan’s regard for ordinary individuals took place in a North Carolina parking lot. “It was during the 1976 primary fight,” says Dana Rohrabacher, who then worked on the Reagan campaign as an assistant press secretary. “We were getting ready for a rally in this gigantic parking lot at a shopping mall. I was in the staging area behind the podium, and a lady called me over to the side and said, ‘I’ve got a group of blind kids here. Since they can’t see him, I was wondering if you could have Governor Reagan come over and tell them hello.’”

Dana passed the request on to Mike Deaver, and Reagan, who was standing nearby, overheard. “He said he’d do it, but he didn’t want any photographers,” Dana explains. “Can you imagine that? He was in the middle of a presidential campaign, and the press would have gone wild for a photo of him with a group of blind kids. But Reagan wanted this to be between him and the kids.”

Deaver came up with a plan. When the speech ended, Deaver told Dana, he’d begin walking Reagan back to the campaign bus. Concluding that the candidate was about to leave for the next event, all the reporters and photographers would hurry back to their own buses. And then, when the press had cleared out, Deaver would double back with Reagan, returning the candidate to the area behind the podium, where Reagan would meet the blind children.

“It worked,” Dana says. “The press guys all went back to their buses, and I brought the lady with the blind kids back behind the podium. There were six or seven kids, real sweet little kids about eight or nine or ten years old. Since there was a lot of background noise — Reagan bent down, close to the kids, to talk to them. But somehow I could see him thinking that that wasn’t enough. So after the kids had asked him a couple of questions, he said, ‘Well, now I have a question for you. Would you like to touch my face so you can get a better understanding of how I look?’ The kids all smiled and said yes, so Reagan just leaned over into them, and one by one these little kids began moving their fingers over his face to see what he looked like.

“The only picture of that scene is the picture in my mind,” Dana says. “But I can still see those kids, touching Ronald Reagan’s face and smiling these really big smiles.”

“The Declaration of Independence,” G. K. Chesterton writes, “dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; it is right [to do so].... There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man.” Although in nearly every way you could ever imagine, in other words, we humans are not equal but unequal — some rich and some poor, some bright and some dull, some healthy and some sick — in one way we enjoy perfect equality all the same. Did the 40th chief executive ever read Chesterton? I can’t say. Yet Ronald Reagan demonstrated an implicit belief in the sacred and equal importance of all men as children of God.

[unkus]

Obama’s European adventure is quite revealing about what type of president he’d be. I shudder at at the thought.
—
And remember that he was holding back on his true feelings and what he would really like to do. He was being reserved.

[misterrob]

This election is about the lesser of two evils.

[cousair]

First Obama pimps Reagan and JFK in his “wall speeches” Now he dis’s our combat wounded because the CAMERAS would not be allowed. The arrogance of this guy is just a little over the top for ALL AMERICANS. We are not ready for an arrogant candidate who wants to change America and have us all become members of the global socialist world of Europe. He had to tone that down with his statement about “loving America and it is our TIME” Sorry Obama, you misspoke...you meant “YOUR” time.

[Fox_Mulder77]

I can’t wait to hear all the excuses the media are going to make. /s

They’ve been lying about the situation so far... I guess they’ll lie for the rest of the day, and hope the weekend lull will make it disappear.

[Tex Pete]

As the brother of a blind guy, that story about President Reagan brought tears to my eyes. What a Godsend he was for our country.

Obama isn’t fit to hold Ronald Reagan’s luggage.

[EternalVigilance]

A beautiful story. Thanks. Made my day.

[southlake_hoosier]

We should be able to turn this into a ‘Dixie-Chick’s’ moment for Barry.

[tbpiper]

touching Ronald Reagan’s face

Obama would rather we kiss his ring.

[yorkie01]

The only troops I saw were in a gymnasium when biraq was holding a basketball and the bunch around the perimeter didn’t represent a cross section of Americana.

[jagusafr]

Gotta love it! The JAGs were doing their job, advising on conflicts of interest in a campaign year even when the advice isn’t popular.

Colonel, USAFR

[6SJ7]

Barak “Photo Op” Obama. Nuthin’ but air.

[Carley]

This trip was always about exploitation.

The campaign banner at the Western Wall. Good grief.

Then his desire to photograph his visit with wounded troops.

We are not amused nor are we surprised at his gall.

[mombonn]

Instead, Obama went shopping in Berlin.

He's making john F'n kerry look like a regular guy.

[Secret Agent Man]

Yes, another way to put it:

This trip was ALL about OBAMA.

Global Attention Whore.