Obama on Deepwater Disaster: "I Want To Know Whose Ass To Kick"

Obama's new tough-guy quote about his petrocatastrophe: "I want to know whose ass to kick."

Play-acting the role of tough-guy.

Of late, liberals have been knocking Obama, but in the mildest possible way.

When Democrats lose elections, they are fully willing to beat up candidates; this blames the messenger while deflecting away any criticism from the message. The important thing is the message of progressivism, after all. John Kerry is disposable. The latter can and should be razed in order to save the former.

Even weaker than blaming-the-messenger is not even blaming the messenger, per se, but knocking only the manner in which he expresses the message.

In other words -- criticizing Obama on style points only, the most superficial sort of criticism possible, and that, of course, is intentional. No progressive wants to criticize Obama on substance, so instead a weak-sister beef is contrived up over his style in pursuing substance.

And hence, lately, the welter of weak criticism of Obama as being disengaged, of not showing he "feels our pain," of not expressing anger, etc.

All of these criticisms are nonsense, and are nonsense by design.

Obama's problem isn't that he's not "feeling my pain" or "expressing anger" or "connecting with the public on a basic emotional level and demonstrating he shares their outrage."

That "problem" can be fixed in three seconds by posturing and delivering soundbites. Soundbites like "I want to know whose ass to kick."

No, Obama's problem is not one of communications or feigning emotion -- that's PR crap -- but of the inky black reality of an oil spill he is unable to do anything about.

He can't even manage to get protective equipment delivered in a timely fashion to Louisiana to protect its shorelines a little bit.

Obama might have a minor communications and messaging problem -- maybe. But that's trivial to the point of irrelevancy.

His real problem has to do with tangible reality. His real problem is not one of words but of deeds, not of dumb-show pantomimes but one of real-life performance.

So let the liberals make up fake criticisms of Obama that can be addressed by consulting some of his Hollywood screenwriter donors for Action Hero Tough-Guy script lines.

But don't be fooled; his real problem isn't what he's saying, but what he's doing, or more accurately, what he's failing to do.

Progressives, I think, hope to fill the air with this insipid critique of Obama's style so that the real criticism, the more deadly one, the one that can't be addressed by photo ops and squirting a tear as he cradles an oily pelican.

If they use up all the oxygen in the room "criticizing" Obama for wearing the wrong ascot at a photo op, they can keep the real criticism from catching fire.

posted by Ace at 07:30 PM

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