Obama's Punch Drunk Performance on 60 Minutes Displays His Inexperience

March 24, 2009 RSS Feed Print
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President Obama, your inexperience is showing once again. One of the most common mistakes made by inexperienced politicians is inappropriate use of humor. Take, for example, joking about the depressed economy. If you're a two-term state senator, maybe you can be excused for joking about a weak economy or laughing about it. When you're president of the United States, it's inexcusable. Yet, President Obama made that exact mistake earlier this week in an interview on CBS's 60 Minutes. Interviewer Steve Kroft called him on it:

Kroft: "You're sitting here. And you're--you are laughing. You are laughing about some of these problems. Are people going to look at this and say, 'I mean, he's sitting there just making jokes about money --' How do you deal with--I mean, wh--explain."

Obama: "Well--

Kroft: "--the mood and your laughter."

Obama: "Yeah, I mean, there's got to be --"

Kroft: "Are you punch drunk?"

Obama: "No, no. There's gotta be a little gallows humor to get you through the day. You know, sometimes my team--talks about the fact that if--if you had said to us a year ago that--the least of my problems would be Iraq, which is still a pretty serious problem--I don't think anybody would have believed it. But--but we've got a lot on our plate. And--a lot of difficult decisions that we're going to have to make."

And therefore, having a lot on one's plate excuses that person from laughing about people being out of work? If you're busy, it's OK to joke about the economy being in a freefall and the ineffectiveness of the president's stimulus package thus far? I don't think so.

Inappropriate laughter is not the only mistake the president made during the 60 Minutes interview. He also hyperbolized, yet again, about the recession. He said he believes the United States could undergo a further implosion of the financial system if Citigroup or AIG have more problems, which in turn could launch,

"an even more destructive recession and potentially depression."

Such talk from the leader of the free world is immature if not downright stupid. Hasn't he learned by now that his words have more impact since he took over the White House? A U.S. president's words move markets up and down, with even more impact than those of the Federal Reserve chairman. A seasoned politician chooses his/her words cautiously, recognizing their impact. For a guy who "gets" it, President Obama doesn't "get" that part of being president yet.

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Obama is the ONLY nation's highest federal executive, to have neither federal NOR executive experience! (And being in the US Senate during his campaign-- and ONLY during his campaign-- hardly counts).

Even Jimmy Carter was a governor of Georgia. But such power has never exactly deterred audacity from seeking it, and Obama ran on a ticket of "the audacity of (false) hope."

But, counting on a 100% African-American vote, and having only Hillary as his real competition against the Democrats, Obama knew that-- like Clinton running against Bush Sr.-- 8 years of Republican blunders left them ripe for an upset, by simply doing the exact same thing Clinton did: promising "hope and change" non-stop-- like Clinton, socialized health-care-- like Clinton, promising to "tax the rich and give the rest of us a break-- like Clinton, and saying the outright LIE that we were in "the worst economy in 50 years (or since the Depression, even worse)--" LIKE CLINTON.

However NONE of the News organizations picked up on this obvious repeat, so similar that I'm surprised Bubba didn't sue Obama for plagiarism; the reason for this is obvious, i.e. that news organizations have an "unwritten rule" against pointing out patterns, since then "it's not news anymore."

Likewise Obama frequently used double-speak like Clinton did: he'd say "ordinary Americans" to mean "the little people" etc; and John McCain couldn't call him out on it due to fear of a "negative campaign" (i.e. a Republican saying anything about anything), and even he had to term Obama's lies as "eloquence" during the debate. Just as with Clinton, the press had the deck stacked openly in Obama's favor: he could lie through his teeth, and if you didn't call him on it in a way that made him look good, then you were "running a negative campaign" (which is press terminology for "telling the truth" that there's an elephant in the room stomping on people).

And the truth was, that Obama is LITERALLY a "slumdog-millionaire," i.e. a shyster for rat-holes in Illinois, running scams all over the state in order to fund his campaign and purchase the election; Blagojevich was simply the tip of the iceberg, as Obama ran an extensive financier-network that also involved Mayor Dailey, Tony Rezko, and Obama's law-firm buddies (this is all revealed at truthaboutomama.webs.com )that makes Bernie Madoff look like WhiteWater in comparison. But the press conveniently looked the other way, just like they did for Bill Clinton, since Obama was the liberal dream: a picture of "diversity" via a black candidate with an Islamic name; to them, it was the true emancipation of slavery... so nobody bothered to mention that Obama was derived ONLY from the BUYERS AND SELLERS of slaves-- NEVER the actual MERCHANDISE!

That's right, Obama's African father came from a family of slave-sellers, while his Mother's side came from a family of the white Americans who PURCHASED and later sold them-- there is not ONE slave in Obama's ancestry. He's FAKE!!

Brian McCandliss of MI 2:34PM July 02, 2009

BARRCK HUSSIEN OBAMA,THAT IS THE FIRST TIME I HEARD HUSSIEN ALL THROUGH HIS CAMPAIN. HE NEEDS TO BE IMPEACTED...

jason wade hutchins of TX 8:02PM April 20, 2009

Astute commentary here about Obama's lack of experience and, indeed,his appreciation of the fact that he's no longer in campaign mode. The man has been elected already as President!

Why can't he act Presidential? What's wrong with him? Punch-drunk with cluelessness as to what a President is all about.

Being a President is definitely "above Obama's paygrade". Sadly, we just discovered this inconvenient Truth! God help us!

Perhaps Hillary would care to answer that 3:00 am phone call? I wouldn't trust this guy! And now he wants to launch drone missiles to Pakistan and has 21,000 troops going to Afganistan. Scary indeed! And we though Bush was the idiot....

mary of NY 12:29AM March 29, 2009

Bonnie Erbe

Bonnie Erbe

Bonnie Erbe is a contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report and hosts PBS's weekly news analysis program, To the Contrary with Bonnie Erbe. She also writes a weekly syndicated newspaper column for Scripps Howard News Service.

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