It's nice to have a well-spoken President

[YOhio]

The targets are still gay people, overweight people, males who don't fit a typical male mold, females who aren't typically feminine, and the mentally disabled. The more things change the more they stay the same.

Fat jokes are too funny to ever go out of style.

[LA Ute]

If we are getting technical, how many people here still use the word "lame" to describe something? Isn't that a slur against the handicapped?

I think it's a slur against LDS men the morning after a church basketbal game.

[TripletDaddy]

That's a crippled comparison. This latest Obama gaffe highlights something interesting. It's impossible for Obama to live up to the hype. For the past year we were told that he was the great communicator, the one we've been waiting for, etc. But he's just a very talented guy who flubs up. I have no problem with that. But I do have a problem with people who butchered Bush for the past eight years for every little slip up, which happened all too often, now making excuses for Obama.

"Oh, brother."

Nobody said Obama was a perfect speaker. He is still a great speaker. He messed up last night, He apologized.

Your response is premature. The criticism of Bush was not just that he was a "poor speaker." The criticism was that he was unintelligent. He forgot names, used non-existent words, had poor grammar, said things that made little sense, etc. It seems like bad luck followed him to every speaking engagement......in China, he tries to leave the stage through a fake door that is nailed shut. He goes the Middle East and a guy throws a pair of shoes at him. He mispronounces the names of foreign leaders. That was his undoing. All leaders have PR slip ups. Bush actually had relatively few "PR" slip ups in the sense that Obama is having one right now. Bush came across as an idiot because he spoke as an idiot. When Obama starts inventing words and mispronouncing things, then the comparison will be apt.

[venkman]

Nobody said Obama was a perfect speaker. He is still a great speaker.

[youtube]cxxxGUeZtno[/youtube]

[SteelBlue]

I hate things like this. For the next week I have to listen to conservatives pretend that they are offended by something they would have defended if Rush had said it. And I have to listen to liberals who will defend it as not being newsworthy, or an innocent gaffe but would have crucified Bush for saying it. What fun.

[YOhio]

in China, he tries to leave the stage through a fake door that is nailed shut.

What an idiot!!!!

[YOUTUBE]9RV3QxYBLhM[/YOUTUBE]

When Obama starts inventing words and mispronouncing things, then the comparison will be apt.

Oh, sister. At least he's off to a great start! In the couple of weeks he has rudely treated the UK PM, thanked himself in a St. Paddy's day speech with the Ireland PM and made fun of the Special Olympics.

[SteelBlue]

My favorite Obama "gaffe" so far was reported here:

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/132087.html

With the bumbling Texan retired to his farm, certain members of the British press were surprised to find that, in the words of The Telegraph's Iain Martin, Obama "might not like the Brits." What better illustration of his contempt for England, Martin writes, than Obama's gift to Prime Minister Brown: a box of 25 DVDs, including Star Wars, E.T., and The Wizard of Oz. And in case you were wondering, the Brits "do have television and DVD stores on this side of the Atlantic]

[TripletDaddy]

Oh, sister. At least he's off to a great start! In the couple of weeks he has rudely treated the UK PM, thanked himself in a St. Paddy's day speech with the Ireland PM and made fun of the Special Olympics.

And he is awesome!

[il Padrino Ute]

I hate things like this. For the next week I have to listen to conservatives pretend that they are offended by something they would have defended if Rush had said it. And I have to listen to liberals who will defend it as not being newsworthy, or an innocent gaffe but would have crucified Bush for saying it. What fun.

In other words, it's no different than any other day in the history of covering politics.

[LA Ute]

Bush came across as an idiot because he spoke as an idiot. When Obama starts inventing words and mispronouncing things, then the comparison will be apt.

I voted for Bush enthusiastically both times he ran, but I did get sick of his amazing inability to communicate. He is not stupid, but he certainly came across that way. I think it was a big part of his eventual low approval ratings. Most presidents have a "case" to make for their administration, whether one buys that case or not. Bush had one too, but he was painfully inept at making it. (McCain would not have been great at that either.) I'll never support another presidential candidate who I do not think can communicate well.

[TripletDaddy]

I voted for Bush enthusiastically both times he ran, but I did get sick of his amazing inability to communicate. He is not stupid, but he certainly came across that way. I think it was a big part of his eventual low approval ratings. Most presidents have a "case" to make for their administration, whether one buys that case or not. Bush had one too, but he was painfully inept at making it. (McCain would not have been great at that either.) I'll never support another presidential candidate who I do not think can communicate well.

I voted for Bush once. I wanted to the second time, but couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger, so to speak.

Both Bush and Obama are perfect examples of how powerful an oratory can be....for good and for bad.

[LA Ute]

On the other hand . . . .

This is an interesting take:

Such impressions—coolness, slightness—can come to matter only if they capture or express some larger or more meaningful truth. At the moment they connect, for me, to something insubstantial and weightless in the administration's economic pronouncements and policies. The president seems everywhere and nowhere, not fully focused on the matters at hand. He's trying to keep up with the news cycle with less and less to say. "I am angry" about AIG's bonuses. The administration seems buffeted, ad hoc. Policy seems makeshift, provisional. James K. Galbraith captures some of this in The Washington Monthly: "The president has an economic program. But there is, so far, no clear statement of the thinking behind the program."


This in part is why the teleprompter trope is taking off. Mr. Obama uses it more than previous presidents. No one would care about this or much notice it as long as he showed competence, and the promise of success. Reagan, if memory serves, once took his cards out of his suit and began to read them at a welcoming ceremony, only to realize a minute or so in that they were last week's cards from last week's ceremony. He caught himself and made a joke of it. One was reminded of this the other day when Mr. Obama's speech got mixed up with the Irish prime minister's. Things happen. But the teleprompter trope has taken off: Why does he always have to depend on that thing?

Obama looks like a genius compared to Bush (not all that great an achievement) but his "awesomeness" may be wearing thin. And this web site is pretty funny.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

I voted for Bush enthusiastically both times he ran, but I did get sick of his amazing inability to communicate. He is not stupid, but he certainly came across that way. I think it was a big part of his eventual low approval ratings. Most presidents have a "case" to make for their administration, whether one buys that case or not. Bush had one too, but he was painfully inept at making it. (McCain would not have been great at that either.) I'll never support another presidential candidate who I do not think can communicate well.

McCain was painfully inept with the teleprompter, Obama is very gifted with the teleprompter-unless they pull a Ron Burgandy on him- and Bush actually was in between the two.

But as for answering questions without a teleprompter McCain was better than Obama and much better than Bush (though not great in debates). McCain always seemed to do well in townhall type settings and in one on one interviews with reporters, so I think he would have been good in press conference type settings. I also enjoy "righteous indignation" McCain, like when he told off one of the biggest tools around, Donald Fehr.

Obama's gaffes are becoming increasingly impossible to ignore. He was the one who had the Far Side moment at the White House with the big window, Bush's gaffe with the door in China was far more excusable.

Jimmy Kimmel showed a completely faultless gaffe where Obama says "and if they brought Chinese students over here" and inadvertently points behind him at an Asian girl sitting in the front row of the audience.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

As someone that frequently uses the word retarded and 'tard, I don't think I would have made that gaffe in a public setting. I would have instead used something like "I'm pretty retarded at bowling."

[RobinFinderson]

Gaffes are meaningless at the moment. They didn't stop Bush from doing just about any damn thing he pleased. Hell, Bush kept doing everything he wanted even when he was unpopular and had no control over the Congress.

For the gaffes to change anything the GOP must offer an alternative to the status quo. It isn't enough just to pick the low fruit. But the GOP isn't doing this.

Lately there is some tumult over the conservative Dems in the Senate preparing to form a mild opposition to some of Obama's positions. The folks at MSNBC have their sneithers in a wad about these 'turncoats.' I, on the other hand, see this as a tactical ploy. The Dems are hoping to sponge up some moderate GOP voters' support, so that by the midterms, the overall field position will have shifted to the left. The hope will be that once some Republicans have been rooting for conservative Dems for a while, it will be easier to vote for a Dem come next election.

But what are the alternatives? It looks like we have two choices:

Spend like crazy, rewarding bad behavior, but hope that it will stop the meltdown before the world falls apart.

or

Let all of the bad bets fail, let the world economy collapse, and then rebuild.

It is a rock and a hard place, and gaffes are the least of my concerns.