I stumbled across this nasty bit of work today (click on the thumbnail for a read) and it made me think about the difficulties of becoming the US president. It seems that it is not enough to state your politics and defend your politics, but you must also endure some very low blows into the bragain. That whole “terrorist fist-jab” thing that went on last month was one example of it.
It detracts from the seriousness of the situation. Perhaps it makes it all a little less po-faced, but either way, it lacks dignity.
The irony then is that once you become president, you almost never have to answer a difficult question. George Bush was completely flummoxed when he was button holed by Carol Coleman and indeed surprised that he was getting a hard time. The US media treat him almost as though he were royalty.
I guess the same will happen to Obama when he becomes president. Though I do suspect that the party of permanent government in the US (that’s the Republicans, in case you were in doubt) will be much more aggressive when there is a Democrat in office than when the opposite is the case.
Here is Carol Coleman’s interview, just for a little reminiscence.
6 users commented in " It’s not easy being President in waiting "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackThat’s a nasty poster, derogatory and cheap.
It is indeed cheap, FMC.
I enlarged the photo to get a better look. Why am I not surprised that the word “atheist” is misspelled?
In my local newspaper, there are letters to the editor which falsely claim that Obama is a Muslim. This is done,of course,to make him appear evil to the Christian fundamentalists in my area. For my part, I would like him more if he were Muslim because then his feelings on abortion would be more akin to mine.
I don’t understand your comment about Republicans being the “party of permanent government”.
Hi Robert. The ‘party of permanent government’ comment is one that is often used in Britain about the conservative party - simply that for the majority of the time, the Republican Party is in power in the US, only being pushed out of power when the public is tired of them from time to time. In the last 40 years in the US there have been 7 terms of office held by Republicans and 3 held by Democrats, so you could almost say that the Republican party is the party of permanent government.
The ‘party of permanent government’ comment might apply to Republican Presidents being elected more often…..but in the US the executive is only one of 3 branches and the Democrats control the Congress most of the time.
No point in giving the man an easy ride. If things go well for him, he’ll head up a very powerful but relatively small country and he’ll have plenty of gung-ho assholes pushing him to keep the status quo of dominion. He’ll need to survive this petty nonsense with ease if he’s to do good work undoing years of bad work.