This morning on TV I heard the strangest, whiniest thing. The report was on the latest efforts by BP to stop the gusher in the Gulf, and then the story turned to criticism of President Obama.
The people talking, including conservative Joe Scarborough, acknowledged that the administration was doing everything in its power substantively, but that Obama has failed to "emotionally connect" and show that he "really cares" about the people on the Gulf Coast. This went on for several minutes until I finally turned off the TV.
What the hell? I looked up and re-read the Presidential Oath several times and nowhere in it did Obama promise to make us feel loved or otherwise be our therapist.
If you need a hug, go visit your Momma! If you wanna "feel better about the situation," go to the coast, pick up a freaking shovel and start cleaning! Or better yet, start supporting green legislation like alternative fuels, cap & trade, etc. But to complain that the President is not emotional enough about the spill to make us feel better is just kinda stupid, and really, really immature.
Funny how some people cry and moan if a nominee for the Supreme Court is called "empathetic," but if the President doesn't bow, scrape and cry on TV, he's just out of touch. Not everyone cries as easily as Tammy Faye or Glen Beck. Personally, I'd rather have a thinker in the White House than a feeler.
I never cared that W didn't ride the first fan-boat to New Orleans after Katrina, and I don't care if Obama supervises the cleaning-up of the BP oil mess from the Oval Office. I could not care less about kind words or sentiment when it comes to disaster. I only care about competence, effectiveness, and learning lessons from failures.
So, Mr. President, I don't want a hug. I want changes in drilling policy, in energy policy, in clean-up policy, and in spill-liability policy. If you cannot get these things done in this climate, in the aftermath of this failure, you have bigger problems than being too cool.
Heather, we had eight years of a president who felt our pain. There's no going back after that kind of love.
ReplyDeleteI guess we all got a little spoiled with Bill's warm fuzzies. But wouldn't we have been a lot better off if he had kept his warm fuzzies to himself?
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