Obama’s off to a great start without those carefully scripted teleprompter speeches
It’s been noted that during the recent campaign Obama managed to get himself into trouble more often than not when he was forced into speaking impromtu. It hasn’t even been a week and we’re seeing that the trend is going to continue, if not worsen.
President-elect Obama called Nancy Reagan on Friday to apologize for joking that she held seances in the White House.
At a news conference in Chicago, Obama said he had spoken with all the living presidents as he prepares to take office in January. Then he smiled and said, “I didn’t want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing about doing any seances.”
Smooth one, Senator. Never mind that it wasn’t Nancy Reagan who ever did anything even remotely characterized as a “seance.” That was Hillary Clinton.
The realization that he’d managed to carelessly insult someone respected by a significant chunk of the American populace caused his handlers some serious heartburn, no doubt, and prompted the phone call apology. It’s a bad omen, however, of things to come. There are people in the world for whom a hasty phone call will not suffice to remove a careless insult. There are nations on Earth that won’t so easily forgive such a slight. Obama’s managed to get himself into the big leagues and specifically into a spot where there’s nothing to hide his record behind. A string of thoughtless remarks followed by an endless stream of “Oh, gee, I’m sorry”‘s will get old to foreign nations pretty quickly and it’ll just make Obama – and America by association – look bumbling and foolish.
Not the change we were hoping for.
