Andrew Malcolm has compiled a long list of our tone-deaf, ego-driven president's PR blunders. I suspect Obama's belief is that if the story is about him, it's all good. Not really:
Any one of these apparent missteps is inconsequential. However, accumulated over his 118 weeks in office, they create the impression of carelessness at best or, worse, arrogance.Let the little people agonize over the high price of gasoline and how they allocate every precious drop; Obama has an effective carte blanche over our tax dollars and will waste them as he sees fit.
What the White House issues are photos of a tieless, laughing Obama, feet up on the historic Oval Office desk, chatting on the phone system that he complains is so decrepit.
What the public sees, while it frets over stubborn unemployment and soaring gas prices, is a diffident Democrat who takes a 17-vehicle motorcade of SUVs and limos to be seen looking at clean-energy cars.
A pontificating president who suggests that one worried commuter buy a new car instead of complaining. [. . .]
To be sure, other presidents have played golf. Maybe not during three simultaneous wars with the awful accompanying human tolls.
Not likely working the putter the day after a colossal combined earthquake/tsunami natural disaster hit as close an ally as Japan. Or canceling a trip to the funeral of Poland's president and hitting the links.
It's one thing to urge Americans to vacation on the troubled Gulf coast last summer, while your wife flies off to Spain with a planeload of pals.
It's another to spend much of Earth Day in a 747 jumbo jet flying 2,300 miles cross-country back from a slew of multimillion-dollar West Coast fundraisers, as Obama did last week. [. . .]
But here's a selection of other Obama activities scheduled this week: Wednesday he and wife Michelle fly to Chicago on Air Force One. They will be there for three hours. The sole purpose: to tape an Oprah show. Obama will then fly to New York City. The sole purpose: a political fundraiser.
Air Force One costs the government $181,000 an hour to operate.
When asked, "What can you do right now, immediately, to bring sanity to gas prices?" the president replied:
“We’ve got a real problem here,” he said. “This is obviously something that is affecting everybody. And we are looking at every option that is out there in terms of dealing with it. Now I tried to be honest with the American people when I made a presentation a couple weeks ago and I said there’s no silver bullet.”He told you before: his power's not limitless! So quit nagging him. And remember what he said about a trade-in, schlubs.
The president said that there are a few things that have been done to help broadly speaking and more long-term -- including working with the auto industry to increase fuel efficiency standards on cars, and making investments in alternative fuel vehicles.Er, I don't think that's helping. Gasoline is almost $4.00 here. But a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.
“And we’ve got to continue to increase production,” Obama added, “We can do that in a safe and effective way. We don’t want to repeat of the oil spill that we had in the Gulf last year. But we’ve got to continue to make sure that US production is strong.”I've got a feelin' he's foolin' with that last bit.*
But he has prepared some talking points to try to deflect the flak toward the nasty,
profit-making oil companies instead of toward Himself. So there's that.
*Update: EPA Blocks Oil Drilling in Alaska:
There are an estimated 27 billion barrels of oil waiting to be tapped in the Arctic Ocean, off the coast of Alaska. But after spending five years and nearly $4 billion, Shell Oil Company has been forced to abandon its efforts to drill for oil in the region.H/t: Doug Powers at MichelleMalkin.com
With gas at $4 per gallon and higher, one might think that more oil would be a good thing. So what’s the road block? The Environmental Protection Agency. Fox News reports that the EPA is withholding necessary air permits because of a one square mile village of 245 people, 70 miles from the off-shore drilling site.
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But you can't miss Oprah.
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