Wow, only a few days being the president elect and Obama already lost Indiana (and maybe a few other states) for the next election for bashing on one of his most vehement, politically active, supercharged frothing at the mouth opponents of this day…Nancy Reagan.
Geez, I figured they would have to raise taxes or introduce some sort of silly gun ban FIRST to get the conservatives riled up.
I would assume that Obama’s handlers are asking him to stick to the prepared scripts for a while here. I heard that Obama did call Nancy Reagan to apologize. I am sure she was extremely nice to him and made time for the President elect even though she is recovering from a broken pelvis suffered in a recent fall.
The next election is a long way off. Get used to being riled up.
Obama supporters are sure to downplay and dismiss Obama’s snark, but this little window into Obama’s character is very revealing and significant.
That Obama turns out to be such a petty adolescent on top of his lack of experience is not very comforting at all.
Honestly, now that he’s in power with a liberal democrat congress at his back, I’m just hoping that he’s not as bad as his rhetoric or that he’s so incredibly bad that he will mess everything up completely and encourage a political revolt.
The Republicans have become populists. We no longer have anyone (certainly not McCain and Palin) who can educate the populace about the effects of the small power of big government vs. the enormous power of the little man to effect positive change. This is clearly no longer Reagan’s party. The regulation that so many Americans believe will restore stability and reduce inequality are exactly the the items that make our system more fragile by perverting incentives and raising barriers to entry, reducing competition and enriching the corporatists to whom the political class on both sides is beholden.
Obama campaigned on “change”. In reality, he will simply expand the current administration’s interventionist programs. He will be more of the same. McCain had the perfect opportunity to explain how government screwed up to cause most of this crisis, how deregulation would work to put power back into the hands of Americans themselves who are too smart agree to lend on idiotic terms without government guarantees which pervert incentives and he blew it. Why did he vote for the highly unpopular TARP? Not voting for it would have differentiated him from both Bush and Obama and given him the perfect opportunity to point out that Obama’s “change” is actually “more of the same”. And this is the Republican leadership?
Until Republican leaders are more like Wisconsin’s Paul Ryan and less like the bumbling McCain and the populist Palin, we may be relegated to fuming over Democrat blows as American voters continue to choose single party rule by the democrats.
You know, that’s the kind of of thing I might come up with in a careless moment. 15 minutes later I’d be on the phone, begging for her forgiveness.
‘So it, goes,’ as a certain hoosier used to say.
On the contrary, Dan: “please, please, don’t stick to the teleprompter, tell us what you really think!”.
If it has to become real bad, better be prepared and know what’s coming.
Bring it on, cookie.
I agree with Tatyana. There were plenty of gaffes during the campaign and they were fudged over by the media. Now it’s going to be more difficult. Let’s have it all.
Ralf,
I hadn’t quite realized that you were President-elect. Please accept my apologies. ;-)
Really classy.
Our first redneck President.
Exactly, it’s me and not that other guy who thinks he is
PS: I had been meaning to qualify with ‘in his place’, but left it out by mistake ;)
Mrs. Davis – now THAT was a great comment.
Oops, embarrassing.
(A lot of our public officials are embarrassing, dull, and non-sensical public speakers, regardless of party. Why do you suppose that is?)
Had a lovely, lively dinner at LeColonial the other days with a bunch of friends and we talked, in a friendly, but VERY animated way, about Obama. Me, skeptical and waiting, they thrilled. But, they are kind and willing to listen to my nonsense. Italians. I love Italians.
This is whiny of me, but I’m kind of tired of always being the one skeptical person in the room. Why are people so into personalities and not actual, real accomplishment? The feedback loop is broken in some parts of our society – you are rewarded if you are mediocre, you are rewarded regardless of outcome!
If President-Elect Obama is to be a ‘friend’ to the urban poor in the White House, he will have to learn from the failures of some of his very own proposals in Chicago, and from the failures of Chicago in general. I don’t begrudge him the errors, but you have to learn from your mistakes to be effective. I see no evidence of that; I would love to be wrong. I don’t know. I just don’t know. Wouldn’t it be nice if, for once, my inherent fearfulness and skepticism were proven wrong?
Oh well. Back to complaining to the local paper about the unfixed potholes. People like me may be irritating, but we DO get potholes fixed.
(it should read…while in the White House, or something like that).
I wanted to add, also, that he seems like a decent guy, and he seemed to be trying to cover up his embarrassment over “living presidents” with a joke and the joke, off the cuff and what he might naturally say in private, reflected the sorts of things that get said in left-of-center faculty rooms and the like, the sorts of jokes about Jesusland and CaribouBarbie, etc. It’s just sort of what you say and you don’t really think about it or why it might reflect a sort of musty unthinkingness. It’s easy to make fun of certain targets because it’s unoriginal. Someone else does it and you follow along. I’m guilty of this, too, and I’m always embarrassed when I fall into making fun of some public person because it’s the easy thing to do.
*I imagine I will do it a lot with our President-Elect in the future. Sorry, the office of president lends itself to eye-rolling, at least the public theater part of it.
yeah, MD, you might do it but you’re not the person at the top of the food chain. Obama has been elevated into position where people follow him, not the other way around – even in private conversations. And that was not one.
I agree, the future will be full of similar spectacles. If that was the extend of our worries, I’d be content, though.