The devastating post-Christmas tsunami in the South Pacific in 2004 was a carnival of blame for the Bush Presidency, with many a blogger and mainstream news outlet opining on the slow American disaster response and level of aid offered. An organized labor blogger offered a typical critique on “the iniquitous inadequacy of the U.S. response to a natural disaster that has primarily affected peoples with a high melanin content.”
Barack Obama
At the time, Bush’s trip to his Texas ranch for a long-planned vacation was roundly criticized.
The recent Indonesian earthquake and Pacific Island tsunami, when googled as search terms, brings no results critical of America or the Obama Administration.
I guess his trip to Copenhagen was not a problem during this crisis. Granted the disaster in 2004 was much worse, however the lesson is the same.
We are beginning to see many examples that certain types of criticism ended on January 20, 2009, when Obama was sworn in. It is hard to imagine CNN, Big Labor and the blogosphere allowing Bush to use the “jobs saved or created” mantra that the Obama Administration has managed to use as evidence of good economic news. How do you count saved jobs? Why not count every current job in America as “saved” ?
The first pass given post Inauguration was arguably the Broadway play “date night”, costing thousands in security, inconveniencing thousands of New Yorkers, and all while the stock market stood on the same shaky ground as the job market. Imagining any prior president, even Clinton the charmer, doing this in the midst of an economic crisis without a peep from the media is very hard to do. I personally don’t see Broadway Gate as a big deal, but Bush would have been all over MSNBC for a week for it.
The aforementioned groups are either being clever or have way too much invested in Mr. Obama’s success to let a silly thing like bad economic policy stand in his way. Doubtless a bit of both.
What they fail to realize is that they are hurting the legitimacy of Mr. Obama’s Presidency.
Related posts:
- So Cal: Local Tsunami (Non) Coverage
- A Ex-Soldier’s Analysis of America’s Current Wars
- Westminster Abbey Confirms President Obama Wrote Wrong Date
Laura spent years as a Hollywood story analyst, did a big 180, and is now an entrepreneur focused on web marketing and analytics. She's also a mom of one.Laura Glendinning article archive.
