Your generous
donations help keep
this site running.
Visa/MC/PayPal accepted.
The White House has been in the news this past week, mostly for who will be leaving it soon. One is tempted to insert the old "will the last to leave please turn out the lights" joke here; but one will not, because one holds oneself to a higher standard than that. Ahem.
And dominate he did. Monday, he gave a rousing pro-worker Labor Day speech, Wednesday he gave a rousing speech on the economy, and Friday he held the first press conference he's held in months. Finally, the White House seems to have woken up and realized that "overexposure" of a president is a myth propagated by those who oppose him. The "bully pulpit" is there to be used, in other words, not there to gather dust until Fox News decides it is OK for the president to speak to the public.
Augusts, to be frank, are not President Obama's friend. The past month was no different, at least as measured by public opinion polling. Obama was on a downswing heading into the month, and his numbers reflect this in a stark way. In other words, it was a bad month for Obama.
Obama struck a rather humble tone in his remarks, which seemed just about right for the situation. He didn't go out of his way to either claim personal credit, or point the finger of blame. He even included President Bush, by name, in his remarks, after phoning him earlier today.
The media, quite obviously, has lost any capacity it once may have had for self-examination, to say nothing of its sense of irony. Every so often, this is proven beyond doubt by a single story. This, sadly, is one of those times.
Instead, I am amazed once again (even though I really shouldn't be by this point) at how adept Republicans and conservatives (but not hardcore Libertarians, I have to admit, who generally put their political philosophy above pandering to the public) are at suddenly throwing large parts of their core ideology over the side of the boat whenever something is happening (or about to happen) that they just don't agree with on a gut level. "Get the government off everyone's back!" very quickly becomes: "Get the government into your bedroom, your end-of-life decisions, or what chemicals you choose to ingest in the privacy of your own home -- and do it in a manner which we agree with!"
But in all the media reports I've seen yet on the Iraq withdrawal part of the speech (considered by the media to be the most newsworthy part), very little attention is being paid to how exactly we got where we are today -- President Obama announcing he's meeting an important milestone on the timetable for American military withdrawal from Iraq. So I thought it'd be worth a look back at what preceded today's speech. Because, as I said, the mainstream media so far have fallen down on the job of providing any sort of context or perspective (or, even, "a timeline") to Obama's Iraq withdrawal whatsoever -- or, even worse than omitting things, getting them factually wrong.
My biggest problem with both Obama's speech and Emanuel's interview is that neither one of them truly seems to understand that an election is underway. The word "Republican" is not uttered once by President Obama. Rahm only uses the word four times, and only two of those are really drawing distinctions between what Democrats want to do, and what Republicans want to do (or, more to the point, not to do). And neither one of them uses the word "Democrat" (or "Democrats" or "Democratic") once.
Obama, after gaining a bit in his average approval ratings in May, slipped back in June. But the reversal was slight, continuing a five-month streak of amazingly stable numbers. Since February, Obama's approval rating has stayed within one half of one percentage point, which is pretty remarkable. Unfortunately, this trend may be at an end, and his numbers may be headed even further downwards in July.
Which is why, this Independence Day, I will personally be lifting my glass in a toast to a French admiral, and the French sailors who served under him. Because without Admiral Compte de Grasse's efforts, we might not even have an Independence Day to be celebrating. The Battle of the Chesapeake deserves to be remembered. This military triumph deserves a bit of celebration. By all Americans. So, I hope you'll join me in honoring the good French admiral this Sunday. Lift a glass and give grateful thanks to his bravery and his heroic efforts on behalf of our own revolution -- whose successful end he made possible: