Thursday, July 23, 2009

The President's Presser

Pretty weak performance last night, I felt, by our Commander in Chief. If you're going to use the bully pulpit, then you need to bring along some substantive arguments to support what you propose and articulate those arguments in such a way that the public will understand. At the conclusion of the one hour presser, I still don't understand the gist of what Obamacare entails and how it's going to be funded.

It isn't enough to cite anecdotal sob stories about "average Americans" who wrote letters to him about their own personal health care tragedies. Trillions of dollars are at stake. We needed specifics from the President last night and all we got were platitudes and generalities. A missed opportunity indeed...

7 comments:

HMS said...

Did we elect an actor or a Commander-in-Chief?

Which one would you prefer, anyway? Mainstream American would properly prefer the former.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1909616,00.html

Anonymous said...

I felt very sorry for our president as he tried to awkwardly explain and dodge questions that should have been addressed in a very forthright and insightful manner.
I had to turn the TV off as my eyes and ears refused to make sense of the mumbo-jumbo.

Anonymous said...

How about the press? I found myself saying, "Now, there's a stupid question" over and over. Not that I expect much out of them, but they seemed unusually ill-prepared and clueless last night.

-SCNS

Anonymous said...

Well Buckeye, I wasn't there, and I didn't see the Press Conference myself, but from what I've heard second and third hand, the President was obviously quite STUPID, the Rich have been singled out and forced at the threat of prison to pay higher taxes for years, and THAT'S JUST WRONG...

Frank

Anonymous said...

What's reportable is not necessarily what's relevant or important.

Modern journalists are vicious; for many of them, getting a flashy headline seems far more important than getting the point right.

Andrew_M_Garland said...

The press and the country are entirely wrong about what "press conferences" are for.

Obama should have released a detailed "white paper" describing his summary and justification for his health care proposals. (And such a paper for his other policy recommendations.) We need proposed results, methods, justifications, funding sources, comparitive studies, the works. This is the United States Government. It can't be run on notes scribbled on cocktail napkins. The public cannot participate in such a government.

The absence of this white paper is appalling. Instead, we have closed, imperial government. The press and public should be able to review that undelivered document. It is not enough to review bills (even if the bills were available to review!). The white paper is policy, justification, and reasons; the legislative bills are execution.

A press conference is supposed to question the President on his knowledge of the presented policy, and for him to reconcile any apparant contradictions. It is to reassure the public that he knows about what he is proposing.

Instead, we have a few questions and vague speeches about what we would all like in a perfect world, and about the power and money that Obama wants ahead of time to work on it.

It is a magician's trick, to treat press conferences as if they could in any way communicate the needed information, for either support or criticism.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Garland that's exactly how I felt and it seems that president Obama thinks the American people are full blown idiots. As George W said "fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, you can't get fooled again"