Posted on 06/07/2010 10:42:57 AM PDT by pabianice
Communication Gulf
The president, consumed with cleaning up after his predecessors, can't just strip emotion from the public parts of his job.
The BP oil spill is the perfect metaphor for Barack Obama's presidency so far. His first 500 days in office have been—with the significant exception of health-care reform—consumed in cleaning up the messes left by his predecessors in the financial sector, the auto business, Afghanistan, and now the oil and gas industry, where "regulators" in the Denver office of the Minerals Management Service under President Bush were literally sleeping with the industry reps they were supposed to be licensing. Obama's fate is to head up what Donald Regan (Ronald Reagan's chief of staff) called "the shovel brigade"—the crew cleaning up the dung when the elephants leave the circus.
Obama's response has been to shovel diligently at the Wall Street–GM-Kandahar-Gulf Coast cleanup sites. But having properly stripped all emotion out of his behind-closed-doors decision making, he has neglected to add it back in for the public parts of the job. He forgets that being a great professor isn't the same as being a great communicator. The inspirational figure of the campaign is under the delusion that he will be cheapening himself and the office if he uses memorable soundbites in the theater of the presidency. For all his study of history, Obama somehow has failed to notice that Lincoln's "house divided" and FDR's "fear itself" were, well, soundbites.
The result was that his May 27 news conference left no imprint. He even failed to drive home the point that BP, not taxpayers, would foot the entire bill for the cleanup. It's understandable that Obama likes to operate on his own timetable, not the media's.
(Excerpt) Read more at services.newsweek.com ...
I PRAY that Newsmax succeeds in buying this rag, and that Jonathan Alter is the FIRST of these morons to go!
I’m amazed at how nothing is EVER Obama’s fault.....
Speaking of dung... Newsweak is full of it. The Obamessiah had his own people in there and he and they were in on the take.
>> I’m amazed at how nothing is EVER Obama’s fault.....
Brought to you buy the same folks that have degraded language and mathematics.
I don’t doubt that Mr. Bush left plenty for Hussein to handle. Just as Clinton did for Bush; as Bush1 did for Clinton; as Reagan did for Bush1; etc., etc., etc.
So what!?!
Hussein campaigned as the One who would cool the earth and lower the sea levels. He was going to change all to sunshine and lollipops. He was just a little less than God according to some. And so far he hasn’t shown any particular ability to even cope with the demands of the office let alone institute the marvelous “change” he promised.
As George Will once said, the president is “just a fella”. The best of them take up where their predecessor left off and work as best they can with what they have and, hopefully, don’t screw up so badly as to cause broad harm. Hussein is demonstrating that he can’t do that. Hussein is demonstrating that he has no ability to lead, manage or even tread water. He is proving to be just what he appeared to be to so many of us: a committed leftist ideologue only tenuously acquainted with the rigors of reality and possessing no practical experience in actually DOING anything. Long on theory and short on action. He can talk a good game but falls flat in the execution.
Alter is the biggest Obama ball-washer of them all.
He wrote a book about Zero called “The Promise” or something like that.
Ok, let me see if I understand:
The towers are attacked on 9/11/2001 and President Bush is completely responsible because he had been in office over 1 year. The Clinton administration is never even considered as a root cause.
The gulf oil spill happens, and the Obama administration has no responsiblity, even though they have been in office over 1 year? All errors are traced back to the Bush administration even though the MMS office, under Obama, issued drilling permits in 5 minutes to BP.
In spite of the attacks on the WTC, the Bush administration stabilizes the economy but is savaged for anemic job creation.
Obama passes a stimulus bill that will act to cap unemployment at 8%. Unemployment is 9.9% in spite of the stimulus, so the Obama administration is presiding over an economy that is losing jobs. But there is no outrage, no cries of “Where are the jobs Mr. Obama?!” The Obama administration is simply cleaning up after Bush?
Not too biased is it? No double standard here. Oh how I hate liberals.
Hey Newsweak......The Kenyan APPLIED for and got the job!
If he cannot handle it, he should step aside and let his American VP finish his term.
Awwwww, little bammy! Such a trooper! “shovel diligently” Was it raining too?
Lets all give a big-`ol round of applause for the guy! Mr. nose to the grindstone he is!
If GM had gone through bankruptcy, selling off all assets, that would have brought in far more money than the intact company is worth. In contrast, if a liberal sent Newsweek through the same process and sold off writers Jonathan Alter, Fareed Zakaria, Eleanor Clift, the aging George Will, and the rest, he'd still be $3.54 short on the standard Starbucks Caffee Latte venti. If you kept George Will, he wouldn't save anything at all on that $3.55 drink.
Note: For real people, if you sold off Newsweek's assets (their writers), you'd be anywhere from $0.99 to $1.00 short on a small McDonald's coffee from their dollar menu.
“For all his study of history...” Huh? How does the author claim Obama is a student of history? Because he had two autobiographies written by ghost writers? What plausible fact that is known about the one would lead anyone to conclusion that he is a student of anything?
Quickly followed by Michael "They Flushed The Koran" Isikoff.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.