I know I talk about David Broder too much, but this reads like parody:
It took almost a full hour of Barack Obama’s news conference for the professor-president to come down from his lecture platform and show the human reaction to the gulf oil leak accident that people had been looking for.
[….]Politicians know this. A few hours after Obama addressed the media on Thursday, CNN showed a news clip of Rep. Charlie Melancon, a Louisiana legislator who was talking at a hearing about the impact the oily pollution was having on the wetlands of his native state — and had to stop because he was weeping so hard. There was instant empathy.
[….]“When I woke up this morning and I’m shaving, and Malia knocks on my bathroom door and she peeks in her head and she says, ‘Did you plug the hole yet, Daddy?'”
[….]What he says next is so simple and personal that its authenticity cannot be doubted: “I grew up in Hawaii, where the ocean is sacred.” And back to the shared reality: “And when you see birds flying around with oil all over their feathers and turtles dying” — as every viewer now has had to watch — “that doesn’t just speak to the immediate economic consequences of this; this speaks to, you know, how are we caring for this incredible bounty that we have.”
No, there is no way that a president could fabricate a story about something a family member told him. It simply is not possible. It can’t be done. When a president mention some silly thing his daughter supposedly said to him, we must take him at his word. It is that simple.
And all that mumbo jumbo about how many gallons of oil, and how the spill might be stopped, and what the damage to the environment might be, it’s all just academic mumbo jumbo. What matters is whether you cry about it and what cute things your children say to you about it.
I’m an Obot, so I’m glad that at least one Villager liked the story Obama told about his daughter. But all of this takes place in a fantasy world, one where Obama might be able to make it all right with his eleven-dimensional executive powers or by pounding his desk and saying “stop the damn oil spill”.
I just don’t see how we can have an effective political system when teardrops and children’s stories matter more than years of mismanagement at the Minerals Management Service.
Update. Charles Blow brings even more stupid.