Peggy Noonan says his presidency is doomed. Even Democrats want him to be more "emotional." This is getting silly
From cable television, 24/7, we're told that even if there's nothing more Obama and his administration could do to stop the leak and contain the damage, he's at fault because he's just not feeling our pain. On MSNBC Friday morning I watched former Rep. David Bonior, last seen peddling John Edwards to Democrats, complain about Obama's cool. "He's got to get emotional," the Democrat (who was there to balance the anti-Obama ranting of Pat Buchanan) insisted.The same far Right loopy pundit Peggy Noonan, like your average right-wing pundit is entitled to their opinion - no matter how stupid, but not their own facts - Noonan falsely claims EPA chief "went to a New York fund-raiser" during oil spill
So Obama traveled to the Gulf today, to examine damaged beaches and wetlands, reassure the region, and emote a little. "I’m here to tell you that you’re not alone," the president told Gulf residents. "You will not be abandoned. You will not be left behind."
Will that be enough to stop the carping? Probably not. We're a silly people sometimes. Let me amend that: Our Beltway opinion makers, the folks the great Digby named "the Villagers," are a silly people. They want our president to be our daddy. They need Daddy to emote, to be a SNAP — a sensitive new age president. But also an angry, avenging daddy. (Maybe that's why Obama referenced his daughter Malia's worries about the Gulf, kind of weirdly in my opinion, in his Thursday press conference.)
The criticism from the right isn't surprising, and it isn't particularly hard to refute. The loopy Peggy Noonan wrote one of her loopiest columns of all time today, predicting that the oil spill will mark the end of Obama's presidency. But she loses her train of thought almost immediately. Americans aren't angriest about the oil spill, but about government spending and the government "gushing dollars," a tone-deaf metaphor while the Deepwater Horizon is still gushing oil. Noonan never really tells us exactly how the spill dooms Obama's presidency; she's hoping we'll be too caught up in her gauzy, fact-free prose to ask.
Predictably, Karl Rove says the crisis is "Obama's Katrina." It isn't. Sarah Palin, the Quitta from Wasilla, charged that Obama's handling of the spill reflects the "culture of buck-passing at the heart of this administration." The woman who only served half her term as Alaska governor is lecturing the president about responsibility. Hilarious.
The complaints from the left are a little harder to refute, but even there I see a frenzy to lay blame I don't entirely understand. Obama compromised his ability to stay untainted by the oil spill when he flip-flopped and endorsed opening up new areas to offshore oil drilling. Now he's not merely cleaning up the mess of the oil-friendly Bush-Cheney administration, but a mess that's a byproduct of drilling policies he supports.
In her Wall Street Journal column, Peggy Noonan falsely claimed that EPA administrator Lisa Jackson "went to a New York fund-raiser in the middle of the [Gulf oil spill] disaster." In fact, Jackson canceled her appearance at the fundraiser, which she had reportedly scheduled weeks before the oil spill.How about a flashback to what real incompetence looks like in handling disasters - White House Issues Defense Of Bush's Handling of Storm
Three days after Hurricane Katrina wiped out most of New Orleans, President Bush appeared on television and said, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." His staff has spent the past six months trying to take back, modify or explain away those 10 words.
....The video leaves little doubt that key people in government did anticipate that the levees might not hold. To critics, especially Democrats but even some Republicans, it reinforces the conclusion that the government at its highest levels failed to respond aggressively enough to the danger bearing down on New Orleans.
