Rest assured, if not already, the media will soon inform us that Obama is mad. About Jonathan Gruber’s comments of course. Hopping mad. M-A-D mad. He’s so mad. Did you know Obama is mad?
This seems to happen a lot. It’s as if he’s hanging around the White House, Air Force One, or any of the various world-class resorts and/or golf courses he frequents, thinking about ways to help the middle class while he channel surfs. In between that show about the tow truck operators in south Florida and an Eminem rockumentary he sees the same “breaking news” crawler everyone else sees chronicling some sort of bad news. And it makes him mad.
So mad the White House press secretary will convene the press corps where he will perform the role of human emoticon and dutifully apprise them of the President’s emotional status. Mad in a weirdly detached sort of way. Kind of like the “mad” a bystander might feel if, while putting groceries in the trunk, he or she saw someone deliberately plow a shopping cart into the passenger door of the nearest minivan.
Obama’s aw shucks bystander-like behavior is interesting in and of itself. The media has even caught on. On Nov 14, 2014 CNN curiously reported, “President Obama, who will act on immigration reform by the end of the year, has not reviewed final administration recommendations on immigration but is aware of the general details in the expected plan”. Isn’t Obama a part of the “administration”?
Considering that he is supposed to be policy-smart — “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors” he once said — shouldn’t he know a little bit more than just the “general details”? That he wouldn’t be well versed on a plan seems strange considering how policy-engaged we’re told Barack Obama is. But that’s another story.
It’s a near certainty he will be mad about Gruber. Why he’ll be mad isn’t precisely clear considering he met personally with Gruber in 2009 and the two discussed, in the Oval Office, the fallacy behind the Cadillac Tax among other things. It’s not as if Gruber left him totally in the dark about what was going on.
But it’s not the first time Obama’s been piping mad about something like this. He was mad last year when Obamacare enrollment websites didn’t work for example. No one was madder than he. Obama got mad over the initial response to Ebola. And over revelations that the IRS had applied disproportionate scrutiny to conservative 501(c)(4) organization tax exemption applications; so mad he asked IRS Commissioner Steven Miller to step down. Mad over allegations of Secret Service misconduct in Colombia, too. And we can’t forget how mad he was over the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and AIG executive bonuses after the insurer was bailed out using taxpayer money.
By contrast, it’s interesting to note events that haven’t made him mad. Riots in Ferguson, Missouri for example don’t seem to bother him too much. Nor was he angry with Spike Lee when Lee didn’t do the right thing and gave out the address of an elderly couple that happened to share George Zimmerman’s last name. Derailment of a train carrying crude oil in North Dakota — that might not have happened if the Keystone XL Pipeline were in operation — which ignited a fire so large the entire town of Casselton (population 2,491) was evacuated didn’t seem to bug him. Nor did FEMA’s response to a flood that put large sections of Nashville, Tennessee underwater. Lackluster reconstruction efforts in New York and New Jersey following Hurricane Sandy didn’t perturb him either. When $767 billion stimulus dollars didn’t produce the “shovel ready” jobs he had promised, Obama wasn’t mad, he thought it was humorous. “Shovel ready was not as shovel ready as we expected,” he joked.
In any case, Obama will be mad. So very mad. Just like the average American was when the Gruber videos first emerged. It’s by design. Obama portrayed as one who shares the same emotional fury average Americans feel, is a tactic designed to make him appear personable and to establish a personal connection with the average American. It’s a variation of the old Bill Clinton “I feel your pain” shtick.
More importantly, the appearance of anger gives the impression of action where there isn’t any. Obama doesn’t just share the feelings of the average American, he’s mad and that means he’s going to make things happen. Big things. Huge things. “Heads are gonna roll” kinds of things. Because he’s mad. So mad.
The mainstream media will be reporting how mad he is any day now.
Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/adamglanzman/8173870044/ http://clashdaily.com/2014/11/aw-shucks-barack-obama-mad/
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