did you plug the hole yet, daddy?

I never thought I'd say it, but this post by Clive Crook is very good indeed. In fact I was about to write a similar thing myself. Here he is:

Apparently it is a great idea to elect a president who is calm in a crisis, except when there's a crisis. Then what you need is somebody to lead the nation in panic -- or, as Maureen Dowd put it, to be "a prism in moments of fear and pride, reflecting [sic] what Americans feel so they know he gets it." What the nation needs at times like this in fact is a daddy who will stop being so remote, and make everything all right. You think I'm exaggerating? Dowd:

Oddly, the good father who wrote so poignantly about growing up without a daddy scorns the paternal aspect of the presidency.

The paternal aspect of the presidency. We are all Malia now. "Did you plug the hole yet, Daddy?"

The oil plume has precipitated a secondary spillage - a massive gushing of nonsense from America's senior pundits. Dowd's column is bad, though it's not quite as embarrassingly, don't-know-where-to-look bad as Peggy Noonan's (for whom, as readers from the campaign will remember, I have a high regard). Noonan, after criticising the president for being too pro-government, thinks that Obama's failure to prevent or fix the mistake of a private oil company is evidence of damning incompetence.

As Crook says, even normally loyal people have been spouting pollutants. Ed Rendell (the Democratic governor of PA) said "Bill Clinton would have been down there in a wetsuit" which - once you get past the image of Bubba in a wetsuit - points up what a load of patronising guff this is. Yes, say the critics, we know that such crass displays of completely irrelevant "action" won't do anything to help stop the leak - but the voters are so stupid they need to be deceived.

It's not just pretend "action" - the pundits want the president to do pretend emotion too. Emoting won't stop the leak either. Nor will it help Obama. If there's one thing that people like James Carville ought to know, it's that a politician who tries to be someone he's not forfeits the respect of voters (yes I'm looking at you, Al Gore, though I'm sorry to hear about your divorce). You think Obama's a bit aloof, a little cool? Well maybe, but that's the guy that got elected. He is who he is - and it's to Obama's great credit that he hardly ever pretends otherwise. Now let him get on with the job, and judge him by results.

Comments

[ejoch]

This column seemed quite balanced to me
http://www.slate.com/id/2255636/

I find the whole 'emoting' thing utterly silly. The 'plug the hole yet daddy' line made me cringe; either he was told to say that by his press team, or he actually thought it was important. I think I'd have more respect for the former.

[peter]

MoDo, Noonan, et al. provide classic examples of the Managerial Syllogism, famous in boardrooms across the world:

Premise 1: The situation is serious and we must do something.
Premise 2: X is something.
Conclusion: Therefore, let us do X.