Monday, June 07, 2010

Day Fifty: Phoney Barry Baloney

Here's the quote from the video clip: “I was down there a month ago, before most of these talkin’ heads were even payin' attention to the gulf. A month ago I was meetin' with fishermen down there, standin’ in the rain talking about what a potential crisis this could be. And I don’t sit around just talkin' to experts because this is a college seminar, we talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick.”



This is commentary from HotAir:

So here’s his attempt at damage control with another two months of this nightmare (at least) still to go, imitating the same sort of bravado that the left used to detest in Bush in hopes that it’ll stop their caterwauling about his dispassion and give them a happy new meme to push. “See? He’s mad. He cares.” It’s completely out of character with his Cool Hand Luke persona and roughly six weeks too late, which means it’s as phony as a three-dollar bill, but so what? This is all about changing the subject from the spill itself to Obama’s engagement with it, and for low-information voters, it’ll do nicely. Three cheers for the cynical scripted soundbite!

Yep--droppin' the g's, showin' he's down with the common man. As Ace of Spades says, "Play-acting [actin'] the role of tough guy."  The big lamestream "criticism" of Obama is that he doesn't express the message right. He's not enraged. Contrast that with the criticism of Bush, that he was an incompetent buffoon. So all Barry has to do is get the message right--come out with the right sound bite about "kickin' ass," and all of a sudden he's taking care of business in the Gulf oil disaster. We aren't quite that stupid, Champ.

ABC News poll, out today: 69% rate the fed's response to the Gulf oil disaster negatively; by comparison that number was 62% after Katrina. This is a perfect example, as if we needed it, of how the damned liberal press protects Barack Obama. But maybe it's not the message, Barry, as Michael Goodwin writes in a recent column. Maybe "O's just not up to the job." Writes Goodwin, The federal government should have assumed command and control of everything except the well, and billed BP for the cost. It didn't because Obama doesn't want to, or doesn't realize he should. Either way, he's not behaving like a president who gets it.

The commenters at HotAir are on it, as usual:

Obama must be hoping to find an eight-year-old girl responsible. Anyone tougher and he'd have to call out his union thugs.

Kind of reminds me of the dorky kid in elementary school who would always brag about how he knew karate.

Come 2012, we know exactly whose ass to kick.

All he has to do is bend over and there will be plenty of people to show him.

If Michelle said it, you could believe her.

"Daddy, whose ass are you going to kick today?"

Update. "The Thrill is Gone," says Jack Kelly at Real Clear Politics. If only it were so. Then there's this article at the Weekly Standard by Andrew B. Wilson, "Arrogance in the Executive" which begins, "Real leadership means never having to say you're the boss."

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