Jay Cost admits to being exhausted – by Barack Obama’s endless campaign:
Chicago has lost its Olympics bid, despite Obama’s insertion into the process. People are shocked because they figured that Obama would fly in if and only if the deal was done.
But why? That assumes a typical allocation of the presidential prestige. President Obama has been anything but typical in the use of that asset. Let’s remember that this is the President who in the last nine months has appeared on both 11:30 PM talk shows. This is the President who can be seen on TBS in a spot advertising the upcoming George Lopez Show. This is the President who has had more primetime news conferences and more joint addresses to Congress than any president up to this point in his campaign tenure. This is the only President to pull a “Ginsberg” (and my guess is that he’ll set the record for that when it’s all said and done). This is the President who has gone out on the campaign trail again and again and again, even though the election is long since passed. This is the President who puts himself – and his family – on the cover of all sorts of supermarket and newsstand magazines month after month. This is the President who never hesitates to inject himself into the public consciousness for any little reason he likes.
Cost believes that the American public will, at some point, say enough. (Please go read the whole piece – Cost’s exhaustion with the won is worth reading.)
I suspect he’s right. Too much exposure, too much self-important hectoring from the obviously very self-impressed Obama will eventually backfire on a grand scale. This is not how we expect our president to act. Part of why he failed so miserably in Copenhagen is, I suspect, that members of the IOC were not quite as adoring as the American press is. Obama obviously believed that his flitting in would impress and overawe those folks. His sheer presence would carry the day.
The Ego Has Landed shtick fell flat.
They are already tired of the posturing president in Europe. Americans will not be far behind. Despite the die-hard efforts of the press to genuflect to the won at every opportunity.
Via Memeorandum
I was sick of the guy by the end of his speech at the Democrat Convention in 2004.
The press needs to start throwing banana peels at his feet instead of rose petals.
“The Ego Has Landed”
Gaius, you ought to copyright that phrase.
That phrase was on Matt Drudge’s site the day the committee smacked Obama down.
“Gaius, you ought to copyright that phrase.”
Going viral, along with: “Face it America, he’s just not that into you.”
What a stiff.