Media Reviews of Obama's Syrian Performance Not So Glowing

Amateur hour.

Ah that's too bad. But then, a president once said of politics, if you want a friend, get a dog.

Obama's got two of them. And I don't mean Bo and Sunny.

Apparently John Kerry had a tough time explaining his boss' weakness and fecklessness with Chris Wallace.

Last night I saw David Axelrod tweeting that with Obama punting to Congress, Congress is now "the dog that caught the car." In other words, he was claiming a hearty pro-Obama spin, similar to but a little different than BuzzFeedBen's and BuzzFeedChuckTodd's. Axelrod's suggestion is that Congress was chasing down this car (the Syria issue), not having any idea what to do with it, and has now caught it, and aren't they in trouble now.

Well, ultimately, they can just do what dogs do when they catch a car: Nothing. Which is what Congress should do about many invitations to authorize war.

Though I do enjoy Axelrod's suggestion that all decisions about going to war are just so much jockeying, spin, and politics. Revealing.

Update: Even David Sirota gets it. Bam!

Update: A commenter put this bee in my bonnet. He didn't say this, but he talked about something reasonably close to it and suggested this:

When Obama was planning to strike Syria without Congressional authorization, word went out from his conspirators that there would probably be no presidential address on that matter. That Obama would not be on TV. They claimed this decision was made because TV is "old technology" and they would rely on the "new technology," apparently consisting of cutting-edge press releases, to note the US was now engaged in war without a vote in Congress.

Obviously this decision was made because the strike would be unpopular and Obama didn't want to strongly associate himself with it.

But notice that yesterday, when he announced the more popular decision to punt to Congress, suddenly the "old technology" of the Televised Address was totally relevant again.

Unpopular Decision: TV is old technology. Obama will just Like his unilateral war on FaceBook.

More Popular Decision: Straight to a national televised address.

Interesting, no?

posted by Ace at 01:43 PM

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