When the going gets tough, the tough get going. President Obama, by contrast, conjures a bogeyman. There are no tragedies in Obama’s world. The wisdom of the saying “—- happens” is unknown to him. If something bad happens it is because there is a dark force. Out there. With evil intent.
In the summer of 2009, humiliated because of his failure to pass a health care bill, he went around the country strewing around shocking rhetoric about doctors. Apparently he thought they would make convenient villains because some of them make a lot of money. Last winter he lit into “fat-cat bankers” — but still apparently expected them to show up at thousands-of dollars-a-plate fundraisers to give him money.
Now, trying to get out from under the shame of being impotent in the face of the BP oil spill he is lashing out with some of the most polarising, buck-passing rhetoric I’ve ever heard out of an American president. The oil spill is not a terrible accident. No, it is “an assault on our shores, on our people, our economy”, as he put it a few days ago in a speech on a Louisiana beach.
Apparently the White House has decided they like the phrase “boot on the neck.” It has been used several times now in reference to BP by different White House spokesmen, the latest being Obama appointee Ken Salazar who said “we will keep our boot on their neck until the job gets done,” The implication is that BP’s executives are somehow content with the state of affairs and won’t move unless frogmarched along.
Now he has compared the spill to 9/11. Incidentally it’s not the first time he’s upped the emotional ante by injecting a terrorism comparison. In a 60 Minutes interview last winter he compared bankers to suicide bombers by saying “The problem is that unfortunately this is like the guy who has dynamite strapped around him and his finger on the button. You know, you gotta kind of talk him down because all of us could go.”
Thanks for “bringing us together”, Mr President.
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