Saturday, July 25, 2009

I must be an idiot

by Smitty

Brent Baker at Newsbusters has one of those Katie Couric quotes that doesn't make sense. Lots of stuff in life doesn't make sense, for example, Debye Length. Sometimes you hit one of those intellectual speed bumps and think: "Maybe I'm missing something crucial here." Newsbusters:
ABC, CBS and NBC all led Friday night with President Obama's decision to appear in the White House press room to backtrack on the fury he inflamed by presuming "stupidity" by the police in the Professor Henry Gates alleged "racial profiling" incident, but only Katie Couric trumpeted Obama’s appearance in the White House briefing room -- which the CBS Evening News ran for an uninterrupted four solid minutes -- as "extraordinary" and "really unprecedented," before she pouted over how "the timing could not be worse. Just as he was pushing so hard for health care reform and having some pretty serious setbacks."
Does anyone have instight into Couric's mind, to grasp by what logic she would think that this non-command of basic leadership from the POTUS (praise in public, admonish in private) on display in Crowley-quiddick matters in the health care debate?

Flip that around. Some of the most expensive, society-shaking legislation ever typed and scat-flung about by our 535 Congressmonkeys is going to be threatened, by something unrelated that the POTUS said?

I don't get it. You can take the cynical view that Crowley-quiddick is simply a device to distract attention from the steaming, unconstitutional loaf that is the health care reform legislation. Why that doesn't make sense is that, when the legislative effort itself is capsizing,

expending approval ratings in a moronic statement seems tactical, at best. Is the thinking that this somehow buys support amongst the hardcore believers, by painting the POTUS as victim? "He tried, real, real hard, but stuff just happened."

If there is anything that the White House learns from this, the words "Above the Fray" should be first. Coming after precedents of attacking conservative radio personalities by name, one is un-hopeful of any change.

Update:
Related attempts to apply logic to emotion courtesy of Dan Enoch, at POWIP.

Update II:
Crowley and Gates are relatives? (h/t Political Castaway)

2 comments:

  1. The Debye Length... It's one of those things that I've often wondered about but didn't even realize that someone had already not only thought of it but has already got it pretty much figured out. Thanks for that bit of fascinating info. Keep up the good work.

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  2. Do I stand alone in maintaining that Obama went all hair-on-fire over Gates PRECISELY to draw attention from his massive FAIL on ObamaCare?

    And for that matter, on Cap-n-Tax, too.

    And for that matter, on "economic recovery," too.

    Nothing like a good old-fashioned race war to take our minds off President FAIL.

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