It would set my mind, and, more importantly, the minds of James Carville and Cokie Roberts, at ease if you one of you could create a reasonable photoshop of Obama wearing emopants.
Emobama
by DougJ| 45 Comments
This post is in: Black Jimmy Carter, We Are All Mayans Now
Corner Stone
I’m not sure why you’re worried about it. Isn’t his Presidency pretty much over anyway?
scav
I admit to being clueless. Having no readily available image for emopants, I seem to have put the poor man in an Elmosuit (as Elmo doesn’t wear pants, only pajamas).
DougJ
@Corner Stone:
It disturbs me that I now welcome your comments as a ray of sunshine.
MagicPanda
I know it has been frustrating for many, including the hosts / front page bloggers here, for the press to be following this line of inquiry. “What? they care more about whether he cries as opposed to whether he’s doing a competent job?”
I myself am more sympathetic. The job of a leader is not just to make sure that problems get fixed efficiently. That is a bureaucrat, not a leader.
The job of a leader contains an emotional responsibility as well. A leader’s job is to inspire the troops, or to calm nerves when things get tough. To give confidence when the road ahead looks unsure. To remind us of our best nature when we are tempted to rash acts.
FDR’s “only thing to fear is fear itself” during his inaugural was about helping us emotionally find the strength to move forward. The Gettysburg address was about Lincoln showing the nation his convictions during a troubled time. These are instances of emotional leadership — of a leader helping the nation face difficult challenges.
Uh… Just to be clear, the oil leak is not of the same magnitude as the great depression or the civil war. Those are just the only examples I could think of because I’m not the world’s greatest historian.
My point is that it’s not unreasonable for people to expect leaders to understand what we’re going through and to help inspire us when facing tough challenges. We want our leader to “get” what we’re feeling (anger) and to help us move past it.
I think that’s what people are getting at when they say that he’s seemed cold, detatched, too “behind the scenes”, “spock” or whatever.
I myself am the world’s biggest obot and I’m surprised that Obama hasn’t done a better job at this. We know via his campaign that he is capable of some strong oratory. I wish he’d play that card more often instead of just, you know, being 100x more competent than Bush.
DougJ
@MagicPanda:
I understand that critique but this isn’t World War II where the country’s morale was an issue. Making everyone feel better about the spill doesn’t make any difference.
Being a president is about more than being a bureaucrat at times. But I just don’t see what rousing rhetoric accomplishes here.
Nellcote
@MagicPanda:
Prez Obama needs to stand on a pile of oiled pelicans with a bullhorn just like Bush did at ground zero. The Villagers all agree it was Bush’s finest hour.
scav
and the great ‘mercan public wants what the great ‘mercan villagers tell it they want.
Brian J
@MagicPanda:
Maybe it’s because I am a calm, rational, smart, well informed, and exceptionally modest individual, but I find his performance thus far very reassuring. I like to think that while not even half the speaker he is, I’d try to be as cool as a cucumber just as he is, but I am not sure I could do it. Whatever he’s doing, it’s working on me.
Cat
This begs the question, what would the caption or text bubble of said photoshop be?
Violet
Obama wears dad pants. Guess those aren’t good enough for highly paid pundits, even though they want him to be Daddy.
Corner Stone
@DougJ: I’m there for you DougJ.
But I don’t need any mescaline. Just some good bourbon. Or bad bourbon, whichever.
MagicPanda
@DougJ: Like I said, my analogies were a bit off, because the only real emotional appeals by presidents that stick in my head were true crises. This oil spill is obviously of a different nature and a different magnitude.
What I’m surprised by is that Obama seems to be using facts and logic to try to get people to understand what his administration is doing. I just wish he’d add some of this to the mix.
http://punditkitchen.com/2009/01/20/political-pictures-barack-obama-chill-out-got-this/
balconesfault
Sucks, treating the American public like adults.
The problem with Katrina wasn’t that Bush seemed not to care. It’s that Bush clearly didn’t care. He didn’t even seem to be informed about what was going wrong until it was way fucked up.
Obama is clearly on top of what’s happening. And he’s not shocked – this is the kind of thing that an intelligent honest person realizes could be the ramification of offshore drilling. And hundreds of Americans aren’t dead. So he’s in problem solving mode.
a) Obama’s smart enough to know that the best people to deal with this are already in the employ of BP, their contractors, or their fellow Oil Companies
b) Obama’s smart enough to know that if the Feds run off BP, et al, and take over trying to plug the leak, we own a big portion of the damage settlements that come down the pike, instead of BP paying for it.
I know that George Will wants to score points, and MoDo wants to prove she’s a bipartisan asshole … but there’s not a lot the average American can do, except to drive less.
It would be nice if Obama made that clear.
Nellcote
Jindal wears emopants and via nola.com:
“Three Democratic state senators blasted Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal on Saturday for not quickly distributing $40 million in grants from BP at the same time he’s been criticizing the company and the Obama administration for taking too long to provide needed resources to combat the Gulf oil spill.
Jindal has “been out there talking to the people impacted by the disaster and the media and got his life jacket on and is out in the water, but I want him to use his executive power to get resources out there instead of standing on the bully pulpit and pointing fingers,” said state Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans.
Peterson said that at a meeting Thursday with BP officials, coastal Louisiana legislators and representatives of the Jindal administration, it was disclosed that the state has spent only about $3 million of a $25 million BP grant for spill-related expenses, and that it has not yet issued a contract for BP’s $15 million grant to promote tourism attractions threatened by the spill.
It also was revealed that the state has called up only 1,100 of the 6,000 National Guard members authorized for the spill clean-up efforts, Peterson said.”
Allison W.
@MagicPanda:
Good Lord, if Obama said that the collective shrieks might just be loud enough to cause the ocean floor to rattle and shift causing the oil leak to stop.
Slowbama
Lots of mythology here that Obama is some kind of misunderstood ubercompetent savant. That dog don’t hunt. People understand him all too well at this point.
His reaction to the Gulf has been pretty clearly incompetent, whether from the oft-derided PR standpoint or from the actual nuts and bolts of forcing BP to behave as a responsible corporate citizen.
Nellcote
@balconesfault:
Oh jeeze, remember the kerfuffle over tire gauges?
gwangung
Hm. The petroleum engineers and geologists here don’t agree.
MagicPanda
@Slowbama: My view of Obama has always been that he is a centrist (or pro-corporate lackey in firebagger speak) and that he is a “slow and steady wins the race” kind of guy.
I don’t think he plays 11 dimensional chess. I just think that he is calm, rational, smart, and patient and that he tries to hire people who are on the same wavelength.
MagicPanda
@Allison W.: Could be worth trying!
mcd410x
We don’t see the point of Obama getting pissed but we love some JCole getting so. I guess we all need a daddy of some sort.
asiangrrlMN
@Brian J: I agree with you (not about being calm and rational because I’m not), but that I find it reassuring that Obama doesn’t rend his garments and gnash his teeth. And, as Mnemosyne has pointed out countless times, Obama IS pissed. I watched part of his press conference, and I could tell that he was seething. It’s a Midwestern thing that many people don’t understand. And, again, I will say that if he shows anger, then he’s the uppity black man. If he cries or whatever, then he’s a weak-willed Democrat. He can’t win no matter what he does, so he might as well stick to being reasonable, restraining his anger, and try to fix the damn problem. The bottom line is, there is not much hope right now. No sense of histrionics is going to change that.
@mcd410x: Yes, because Cole isn’t actually in charge of running the country. And, from what I’m gathering, people want Obama to cry and wail, not get pissed. Either way, it’s endearing and cathartic in a blogger–not so much in my prez.
Cat Lady
@MagicPanda:
So, I Got This would mean… what? It would be stupid because it means nothing, because he can’t stop the leak. Got it?
@balconesfault:
Obama should tell everyone to drive less? How bout telling them to put on a sweater too? That worked out really well last time a Dem president tried to treat Americans like grown ups in the midst of an oil crisis. Apparently, the whole fucking country consists of thumb sucking 2 year olds who can’t remember what happened last week. Of course he could fireside chat us all, but then the narrative would be that he’s displaying weakness by responding to criticism and would focus on how he says what he says, instead of focusing on the fact that we do need to drive less, consume less, eat locally, blah blah blah. Americans suck. I’m beginning to believe that this oil crisis is the best thing that could happen to us here in Dumbfuckistan. Hopefully it’s the 2×4 on the side of the head that wakes everyone the fuck up. Now.
Uloborus
@MagicPanda:
Okay, but in politics these days, that IS 11 Dimensional Chess. ‘I’m going to act like an adult and let my opponents show off the fact that they’re really a bunch of monkeys’ is apparently the kind of intricate deviousness that the Village cannot comprehend.
Evelyn
For the record, I’m a total emO-bot
Quiddity
I don’t see why this is a recurring issue at Balloon Juice. Sure, some of the pundit commentary has been silly regarding Obama’s style, seemingly wanting him to act like he’s in a Tennessee Williams play. But I think a case can be made that Obama could do better on the rhetoric front. Or that he could bring forward an ornery cur as a spokesman-coordinator for this problem.
My metric for how well Obama is doing are the polls. It’s too early to say for sure, but it appears that he’s only doing “fair” when it comes to reflecting the national mood re the BP spill.
In this digital age, where is the White House’s internet presence for the spill? All I can find is this:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/deepwater-bp-oil-spill/
While the single page (!) is clean and has links, it lacks a sense of urgency and mission. There is no chronology of action. There are no pictures. There is no Twitter feed. It might actually benefit the WH if they had a live cam of the leak along with various maps showing how far the oil has spread.
A good message campaign can do wonders politically, especially if it’s not bogus (which so many of the Republican attempts are). I can’t believe the WH couldn’t allocate $400 grand and hire a tiger team to whip together a special website and run media outreach program.
Allison W.
by the way, as the media and others paint Obama as cold and detached, have they completely forgotten the eulogy that he gave for the coal miners? and the pictures of him meeting with the families? how about those soldiers that were killed in the Fort Hood attack and the speech he gave there?
I’m confused as to how a person who can get hundreds of thousands of people to stand in the cold, rain and/or heat for hours just to hear him talk is being accused of not feeling people’s pain. People really have to feel a connection with you to do that and those connections happen because they feel he gets it or gets them. You can’t inspire people if you don’t understand what they care about.
scav
@Quiddity: alas! We’re simply so sorry that we fail to live up to your meme about what they hell people should want. Please, please, bring your message to those that wish to be told what they want.
MagicPanda
@Cat Lady: what I meant by that (admittedly shorthand) was that there is an emotional component to telling people that it’s a hard problem, that it may take months, that the us government doesn’t have magic powers, that every single conceivable resource is being brought to bear, and that people need to be patient.
I dunno. I think it could help. Your mileage may vary.
Allison W.
@Evelyn:
he looks like a member of KISS.
Brian J
@asiangrrlMN:
All good points. Perhaps he figures that in a week or two, the nation’s attention span will be grabbed by something else, probably something far less substantial (i.e. whatever Lindsay Lohan is doing at the time).
asiangrrlMN
@Quiddity: Honesty, I don’t give a flying fuck what the polls say. People are fucking stupid. I read on a YouTube video of Obama’s presser how it’s all Obama’s fault the wildlife is dying. Really? My point is that no matter what Obama does, two-thirds of the country will interpret it to mean he doesn’t care and/or he’s a weak-willed, lily-livered emo-baby who needs a waaaaahmbulance. I don’t see how dramatically saying, well, whatever it is people want him to say in order to prove he cares is going to change jackshit.
@Brian J: Sadly enough, he’s probably right.
@Evelyn: Scared the shit out of me, you did!
asiangrrlMN
@MagicPanda: But what would be emotional enough for you or for the Villagers or for anyone else? The man is pissed. It’s very clear to me that he is filled with emotions. And, no matter how compassionately he says we’re fucked, people do not want to hear that. They just don’t. What you’re talking about is pure political theatre, which, I think, is part of the problem. Obama is supposed to think of the optics at the same time as he’s supposed to be solving every problem in the world.
DougJ
@Evelyn:
I love it.
FlipYrWhig
Let’s say Obama _could_ give the world’s ultimate speech, properly enraged, properly emotional, all the right notes in all the right places. So… _when_ would you use this killer speech? Now, when you’ve got oil still flowing and it’s likely to keep on flowing? Doesn’t that just undo all the good that the killer speech did? Isn’t the timing kind of important? Because it seems to me like oratory without results only adds to the sense of futility. And then where are we? Same place as before, waiting for a bunch of smart people to come up with something that works and/or waiting for a giant drill to go really, really far. Neither of which is sped up by anything the President says or does.
And I do think there’s a fairly substantial risk in being deemed to “politicize” the event. It’s an unenviable position to be in.
Elie
Its bitter — this transition and catastrophe.
He can’t answer this for us and we so want it…
We are between an old understanding of how the world works and the “new” future reality of how it works and we want a bridge that we can live on NOW…
In a few weeks we are not going to recognize ourselves but it is unclear what will be facing us…
The Gimp
Like this?
fucen tarmal
why won’t obama cry?
why won’t obama get angry?
why isn’t he doing more? where is the urgent call to do something? anything?
really all the questions are a chalky diet substitute for the real fat of what the people asking them want?
when do we get to tell obama its all his fault?
i mean, everyone but the far right knows it isn’t, and knows there isn’t much more practically obama can do than what he has done with the economy, jobs, the deficits, etc, but its getting time that they want to put the blame onto obama…they want his to emote, do something, not because he hasn’t taken ownership of the problems, he’s never denied that….
what folks want is to be able to unburden themselves, and blame him. sadly, its going to be like keeping oil off the shores of the redneck riviera.
its amazing to watch how limited people are when it comes to figuring out who caused what….they want obama to make it easy…
Ecks
Ask and ye shall receive. EmObama, an artistic rendition.
fucen tarmal
@Ecks:
that was impressive. starting with a less prosaic emo look, and shopping it up from there. well done.
Ecks
@fucen tarmal: Thanks :)
Ecks
Damnit, now I’m getting all perfectionist. Here’s it with a tiny shift in the face position to make it look more natural
StonyPillow
@Ecks: Thanks. I needed that.
DougJ
@Ecks:
Even better.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Maybe if he calls for the heads of BP execs … Oh no, that would be un-American and anti-business.
And before Katrina he pulled out all the stops to “rescue” ONE woman who had been in a persistent vegetative state for years.