I would prefer 2 more years of President Biden than Barry the Dictator.
Posted on 06/15/2014 9:20:33 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Is President Obama done with Washington?
The 44th president has never been the capital’s biggest fan, but his frustration with life in D.C. is bubbling to the surface in ways both casual and substantive.
The president twice went for unscheduled walkabouts last week, taking a trip to a Starbucks near the White House with his chief of staff Denis McDonough on Monday and, the next day, turning up at a burger joint in Alexandria, Va.
“The bear is loose!” is the president’s favorite phrase at such moments, and he deployed it again last week. Even the metaphor suggests a man straining at the leash after more than five years in the White House.
Yet there seems to be more to Obama’s frustration than cabin fever.
Last Tuesday, Obama was asked about gun control during a question-and-answer session hosted by the social networking website Tumblr. He didn’t try to assert that progress on legislation was realistically possible, instead launching into a personal broadside, permeated with a sense of resignation, against “this town.”
Referring back to the massacre in Newtown, Conn., in December 2012, and the abortive push for new gun control regulations that followed, Obama said:
“I have been in Washington for a while now and most things don’t surprise me. The fact that 20 six-year-olds were gunned down in the most violent fashion possible and this town couldn’t do anything about it was stunning to me.”
Obama also declared that “most members of Congress — and I have to say to some degree this is bipartisan — are terrified of the NRA,” adding that, “right now, it’s not even possible to get even the mildest restrictions through Congress. And we should be ashamed of that.”
“He’s at a point in his presidency where he’s not running for anything ever again and feels very free to speak his mind,” said Tommy Vietor, who served as a spokesman in the Obama White House and has been with the president since his Senate days.
“He seems to care less and less whether he breaks a little china and I think that’s great.”
“He’s never really made it a secret that he’s not a fan of this place,” concurred Jamal Simmons, a Democratic strategist. “I think he finds the pettiness of this place annoying. People are focused on tactics not results, and he sees himself as a more results-oriented guy. He’s more willing to do things with a longer lens of history.”
Obama’s distaste for Washington has always had a political element, of course. Way back during his first run for the White House, he often invoked Washington as a symbol of business-as-usual ineffectiveness and stasis. It was also a place to which, not coincidentally, he could tie his chief opponent for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton.
In late 2007, he told a crowd in Des Moines, Iowa, “The real gamble in this election is playing the same Washington game with the same Washington players and expecting a different result. And that’s a risk we can’t take.”
Nowadays, some observers wonder if even the most apparently superficial examples of his straining-against-the-leash, such as his downtown walkabouts, also serve a political purpose.
Breaking out of the confines of the White House, "reminds people of what they originally saw in him,” said Democratic strategist Doug Thornell. “I think they’re doing this because it reminds people what they like about him: his connection with folks on the campaign trail. … Before he became president, he was an ordinary guy paying off his student loans who came out of nowhere.”
But Obama also seems to savor interactions with “civilians”, people whom he sees as being part of the real world rather than the rarefied Washington sphere. He has been indulging tat impulse a little more lately, wishing people a happy father’s day and working a rope line on Friday before departing for a weekend in California.
During the weekend, he is doing some fundraising events, but will also be spending some downtime with the First Lady.
The Obamas have gone on numerous restaurant dates in DC, but they also seem to relish escaping the Beltway. In April, for example, they took in a Broadway performance of “A Raisin in the Sun” with family friend and advisor Valerie Jarrett.
The couple have also never sold their family home in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, a fact that prompts speculation they will return there after his White House tenure ends.
“Every president professes to miss the anonymity, and I think he really does,” said Vietor.
One former senior administration official, who has worked with Obama since the 2008 campaign, says that the president seems to be feeling some kind of liberation at the moment.
“It’s not exactly a full Bulworth moment, but it’s freeing,” the former official said. “It’s frustrating being in the bubble constantly, particularly for six or seven years.” The official added that it was important to “make sure he doesn’t go stir-crazy,” adding wryly, “I would be.”
But a different former senior administration official cautioned against reading too much into Obama’s activities. The official, though, did not bother to argue that Obama enjoys the ways of Washington.
“I think he has always liked getting outside the bubble,” the source said. Obama’s frustration with DC, he added, has “been pretty steady.”
Either that or he’s laying the groundwork for a surprise resignation.
It is very curious to me as why this is out there. What has he got planned next after this has been put out? Just very weird to me. He is doing everything and anything he wants to. just weird.
Maybe it has been put out there because he took another 4 day weekend. It is so rough in DC he needed a break kind of thing?
I am terrified about the next two and a half years with this tyrant. He knows that he cannot be convicted by the Senate even he is impeached by the House since the RATS will vote with him. He has already committed multiple offenses that would have gotten a white guy impeached and gotten away with them.
The possibilities are horrifying:
Using his pardoning power to make every illegal alien in the country a citizen. His RAT operatives will then register every one of them who is not already registered to vote. The RATS will control every state including those in the South.
Declaring by Executive order that the Second Amendment only applies to Militias and then ordering the Dept of Homeland Security to confiscate all weapons in the hands of civilians.
Read the “Enemies foreign and domestic” books by Matthew Bracken for a very scary scenario similar to this one that is unfolding in front of our eyes.
“The Bear is loose”
As in Russian bear?
Three words: President Joe Biden. Of course, that might give a little spice to the struggle for Speaker of the House if Joe should walk in front of that bus his boss is always throwing him under...
Next: “my phone is broke, I am so broken TV like Hillary. It should not happen in this town.”
Perhaps a “Pander” bear ... it’s both B&W besides
(Definitely NOT A Grizzly — that’s more his wife’s department ;)
another article to make him look like a normal guy from the show Friends.
people are so stupid, on the left and right, to believe these people like Hillary are nice and normal.
I do not get it. Where do these people get their news if any. The mental laziness is stunning.
“I have been in Washington for a while now and most things don’t surprise me. The fact that 20 six-year-olds were gunned down in the most violent fashion possible and this town couldn’t do anything about it was stunning to me.”
Obama also declared that “most members of Congress — and I have to say to some degree this is bipartisan — are terrified of the NRA,” adding that, “right now, it’s not even possible to get even the mildest restrictions through Congress. And we should be ashamed of that.”
OBAMA RELATES THESE TWO PARAGRAPHS?
Sandy Hook needed MORE guns, not less.
Mister President, what would you have the town in Connecticut do to stop a madman with a gun, that doesn’t involve a gun? Please tell me the Community Organizer strategy for a situation with a shooter in an elementary school that doesn’t involve guns? Because I believe the ONLY thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Have any of the mass shootings been stopped any other way than with a gun?? List them here.
Oh, Duh. Of course he’s staying at the Annenberg, I should have known. Ew, hope he is leaving the state today.
The Idiot-in-Chief is, from time to time, scripting and creating his own PR image ( “The bear is loose!” is the president’s favorite phrase at such moments. )
He DOES NOT see the opportunities.. he can ONLY see from a narcissistic POV how to make himself the center of discussion and attention in every and all situations.
Like a movie actor, he's playing the role of the victimized fighter pilot hero in his mind, yet, in real life cannot even fly a plane. My question remains: How much more of this will the "awake" segment of America tolerate?
Panda bear...half black, half white, and scared of its own shadow.
Right, and he can do so much more for the planet as the head of the U.N. /sarc
I would prefer 2 more years of President Biden than Barry the Dictator.
This is studied. Obama is trying to separate himself from "the Washington establishment"...and his own policies!
He's an outsider, it's not his fault...when it commes to "us vs them", he's one of "us". It's Washington that "doesn't work", it's not him.
Limbaugh Theorem...in spades. Adult voters should be embarrassed for their elected child president.
Could anyone imagine CEO of General Electric, Ford Motor Company or Lockheed saying something like that
It also demonstrates this guys overweening narcism- the Presidency of the United States is all about him and the job exists solely to provide a suitably important job title to him
or poo bear
A normal weekend's body count in his Chicago home town.
But they're black kids...and he couldn't care less about them...
I suppose he could get the suit from his AgSec and "Wear the Bear…
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