Posts Tagged ‘president’

Bob Maistros

The Press Secretary:  “Ladies and gentlemen of the media, the President of the United States will now appear to make a statement.”

The President:  “Thank you.  As you know, my administration and I recently completed a lengthy review of our Afghanistan policy, at the conclusion of which I made the decision to grant commanding General Stanley McChrystal some 30,000, or 75 percent, of the additional 40,000 troops he requested to effect a surge in that strategically critical  nation.

Whatever the generals need! Kinda. Sorta.

“I also made the determination that we will begin to draw down those forces after 18 months, depending on circumstances on the ground.

“In making that announcement, I indicated that the dire economic and fiscal condition of our nation was a factor in my decision to limit the number of additional troops being dispatched as well as the duration of their deployment.

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Jamie Weinstein

Remember that oft-replayed Chris Matthews interview during the 2008 election where the talk show host stumped a surrogate for then-presidential candidate Barack Obama with a series of seemingly simple questions: What has Barack Obama accomplished? Can you name anything he accomplished as a senator?

The Nothing President.

The flummoxed Obama supporter wanted to speak in generalities. He wanted to speak of how Obama inspires and of what Obama might do in the future. Matthews wouldn’t let him off the hook. Pressed by the Hardball host, the Obama surrogate just couldn’t name a single Obama accomplishment.

“I am not going to be able to do that tonight,” he finally relented.  Read the rest of this entry »

Lawrence J. Haas

In late February, a week after signing the landmark $787 billion economic recovery bill into law, President Obama tried to change the focus of debate in Washington by shifting attention from the short-term necessity of reviving the economy to the long-term challenge of reducing soaring budget deficits. 

On Monday, February 23, he hosted a “fiscal summit” with congressional leaders, other lawmakers

You call this recovery?

and outside experts to highlight the problem. A day later, he spoke to a joint session of Congress and outlined his plans to begin addressing it. Two days after that, he issued a 134-page budget blueprint. 

Entitled “A New Era of Responsibility,” the blueprint proclaimed a sharp reversal from Bush-era recklessness. “[W]e must,” Obama wrote, “begin the process of making the tough choices necessary to restore fiscal discipline, cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term in office, and put our nation on sound fiscal footing.” 

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Bob Franken

There’s a song by the blues ensemble “Fathead” with a terrific title: “First Class Riff-Raff”. I would call it to the attention of all our big-headed politicians who get so caught up in their delusions of grandeur they don’t remember how Americans see them: As First Class Riff Raff.

Riff-raff.

It’s easy for them to forget that the their esteem and the terrific honorifics are merely the reflected glory of their offices. We chose them after they probably went through demeaning gyrations in order to be elevated onto their government pedestals. So it’s easy to understand why we take great delight in knocking them off.

Jamie Weinstein

In his In the President’s Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents they Protect, journalist Ronald Kessler gives us a peek inside the intimate lives of our presidents. Through interviews with over 100 secret service agents from the past and present—dating all the way back to John F. Kennedy—Kessler paints a picture of what our presidents are like when no one is looking. 

They're always watching.

We learn from the agents Kessler interviews that John F. Kennedy was a serial adulterer (big surprise) and that Lyndon Johnson was essentially a serial adulterer and a lunatic. “If Johnson weren’t president, he’d be in an insane asylum,” said one former secret agent who sometimes was on Johnson’s detail. Secret Service agents found Richard Nixon strange and unsociable. Agents described Gerald Ford as friendly but cheap, often tipping caddies at exclusive country clubs a dollar if anything at all. But the president subject to the greatest scorn is Jimmy Carter.  Read the rest of this entry »

Bob Franken

They are called the president’s “War Council”. Perhaps the more accurate name would be “Face Saving Council”.

As the president and his national security “principals” meet in the White House to discuss how to move ahead with Afghanistan, the best question, the most fundamental question is not on that round table in the Situation Room: If we were starting fresh, what would we do if we were deciding how to send forces and if.

No way out.

Of course that’s not the case, any more than it is in Iraq, and arguably the Afghanistan invasion was more justified than the Iraq foolhardiness, which by the way, depleted the military resources that might have helped do the job in Afghanistan.

But for that reason, and more importantly a combination of negligence and distractions combined with incompetent miscalculations, here we are, too hopelessly entangled to merely cut the knot. Put another way, simply pulling out is not an option.

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