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The Whoopee Cushion in the Situation Room
I’ve developed a somewhat morbid habit of late: every time I see a piece of absurdity in the news, I imagine it occupying half a sentence in some future historian’s tome about the decline of the United States. Surely this belongs in there somewhere. From Darren Samuelsohn at Politico:
Jon Stewart slipped unnoticed into the White House in the midst of the October 2011 budget fight, summoned to an Oval Office coffee with President Barack Obama that he jokingly told his escort felt like being called into the principal’s office.
In February 2014, Obama again requested Stewart make the trip from Manhattan to the White House, this time for a mid-morning visit hours before the president would go before television cameras to warn Russia that “there will be costs” if it made any further military intervention in Ukraine.
To engage privately with the president in his inner sanctum at two sensitive moments — previously unreported meetings that are listed in the White House visitor logs and confirmed to POLITICO by three former Obama aides — speaks volumes about Stewart and his reach, which goes well beyond the million or so viewers who tune into The Daily Show on most weeknights.
Maybe. And that’s probably the angle that a lot of the conservative media will take: “Look, Stewart’s been in bed with the Obama Administration all along.” But you don’t need a couple of White House visits to cement that fact. Jon Stewart’s an utterly conventional liberal either way. That’s not a story. Dog bites man.
The details actually speak volumes about Barack Obama. Ask anyone who’s ever been a White House staffer: on the scale of scarce resources, time on the presidential schedule is a little north of iridium. And yet, faced with one of the most severe national security challenges of his administration, witnessing the Russian “reset” turning to ash, staring down the barrel of a crisis that led serious people to begin wondering aloud whether Russia might have it within its power to break the back of NATO, Barack Obama cleared his schedule for a guy who had a supporting role in Death to Smoochy.
The next Edward Gibbon is going to have his hands full.
Published in Culture
I’m sure that we’re all shocked that these visits were never mentioned, nor were they a source for material, on the The Daily Show.
I disagree.
Bush listened to people as a way of gaining knowledge, then he made up his mind. Bush was grounded in his Christian and (semi)-conservative convictions. Bush would take blame for bad things and give credit for successes.
Obama already has his mind made up. He “listens” to people who agree with him and dismisses as illegitimate or racist anyone who doesn’t. Obama is grounded in the conviction that he is totally awesome and knows everything about everything and can’t be wrong, because he’s The One. Obama takes credit for successes and gives blame for any failures.
I think this is a misdiagnosis.
Obama’s real problem is that he doesn’t believe there are right answers. The world is complicated and we can only choose between one of the many imperfect choices. And then, of those choices, I might as well choose the one that works out best for me.
That’s really all there is to him.
Camille Paglia says that Jon Stewart’s show “demonstrated the decline and vacuity of contemporary comedy.”
I recommend reading the Paglia interview in today’s Salon, the second in a three part series. For a long time Democrat who supports Martin O’Malley, Professor Paglia has plenty to say which will please Ricochet readers.
Paglia contrasts Stewart’s “smug snark” with Mort Sahl’s biting social analysis and Lenny Bruce’s risk taking. To Paglia, a brilliant media critic, politics is performance art and “great stand-up comedian” Donald Trump’s line about John McCain gave her a big laugh.
Paglia is also an atheist who savages the way “juvenile” authors sneer at religious tradition, and a strong pro-sex lesbian feminist who is horrified and disgusted by the Planned Parenthood videos.
In part one of the Paglia trilogy, she compares “infantile” Bill Clinton and Bill Cosby, and discusses the degradation of great universities, which she predicted in a 1992 article “The Nursery School Campus.”
If Barack Obama were less shallow and narcissistic, he’d have invited Camille Paglia for a chat in the White House instead of Jon Stewart and Marc Maron.
That’s more on the country than on Obama or Stewart.
I suspect our Gibbon will read more like Suetonius.
I completely agree with you.
What I’m trying to get at is that the work steps that Obama uses to accomplish his ends resemble the same steps I remember GW taking. There are times when I watch Obama get what he wants that I am blown away with how familiar his process is.
And I would add strenuously it was true during GW’s administration, painfully true.
There was no Ricochet back then, and no place to let off steam. I was so frustrated to see every single thing GW said be misquoted and misinterpreted by everyone, including, I’m sorry to say, what I would have described as the conservative-leaning press.
I do not blame GW for the public opinion problem. I would blame for starters the public schools and universities.
I was driving along in my car one day, and I happened to hear a speech GW gave listing in a very well organized way ten reasons for Operation Iraqi Freedom. His rationale was crystal clear and could be summarized in four words: Look at the map. The only change I would have made would have been to put the tenth reason first–the instability of Iraq. What he said in this speech about WMDs was that the potential for their rapid development in Iraq was great and a threat to the region and to the world.
It made sense to me.
Good PR and good policy aren’t mutually exclusive. I think George W showed that they must go together, in fact. Devoting a few minutes to a primary PR tool will help the policy end.
And regarding Russia, I believe he knew that there would be no costs and that the administration already knew this was simply a bluff on President Obama’s part. What’s to manage in that situation which isn’t already being managed on an ongoing basis? The problem with the president’s response wasn’t that he devoted insufficient time to it, the problem was that he made bad decisions regarding foreign policy from the beginning and he was always likely to make bad decisions from a conservative’s perspective.
Stewart’s response:
http://on.cc.com/1OAIpWF
Agreed. However, persuasion is a process, not a speech. I think where he failed was in counter-argument and counter-counter-argument. perhaps if he had done some courting of prime cultural organs like Stewart or SNL then perhaps they wouldn’t have been quite so unfair to him or the rationale for his policies; support would have been too much to hope, but perhaps less frequency and less stridency and less derangement could have been obtained.
That’s true in many cases, but deeply contingent on the specific matter at hand. PR is most relevant when the underlying issue is consensual. That is, if you’re trying to get a bill through Congress it helps to have the wind at your back in terms of public opinion. Re: Russia, the primary imperative was turning back — or, at the very least, arresting — Russian aggression. What people were thinking in Moscow was a lot more important than what people were thinking in midtown Manhattan at that point.
If the president was trying to steel the American people for a prolonged period of hostility with Russia, I’d be more sympathetic to Obama’s approach. But he misidentified the relevant audience and we met Russian aggression with a hashtag campaign. Law of the Instrument.
How true. :)
It’d be nice if the Democrats didn’t act like pop culture is all that matters and the Republicans didn’t act like it doesn’t matter at all.
I actually appreciate the point of the original post.
I have grown fond of Richard Nixon for some things, but back in my brainwashed youth, when I was caught up in the antiwar movement and the Watergate scandals–all of which I accepted at face value because I was stupid–he did something in the middle of his troubles that incensed me.
He decided the American people were entitled to more episodes in their television series, so he actually got behind a regulation (or law?) mandating that the series producers would have to produce more episodes.
Are you kidding? The world is falling apart, and this is where you spend your time? And worse than that, I was insulted to think that he thought he could buy us off with more television shows.
I don’t remember enough of this incident to back it up with links–I’m sorry.
All I remember is my outrage at how demeaning it was to the American people.
In retrospect, perhaps his opinion of us was correct. :)
I guess you have to get past her claim that Stewart’s show gained in popularity at a time when liberal views were often “neglected, even denigrated in mainstream media” and the media was “cheering on” the war and “caricaturing” its opponents.
Yeah, I remember those days. The mushrooms were magical.
He was trying to steel the American people for a prolonged period of hostility with Conservatives and Republicans!
And it worked!!
I don’t think there was any chance that we were going to meet Russian aggression with anything stronger. It wasn’t about the audience or his schedule, that was the conscious decision and that decision shaped the PR that was needed. The PR helps his presidency with the policy and popularity. The use of PR this way is legitimate independent of whether or not we agree with a policy or a party.
If you find a link, please share. This seems so hilariously misguided from a guy people thought was an evil genius.
Okay. I’ll see if I can find it.
Does my youth predate Nixon and the Internet? :)
I hope not.
Okay, I can’t believe I found this, but check this out:
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1346&dat=19730331&id=bhpXAAAAIBAJ&sjid=a_oDAAAAIBAJ&pg=7140,9242003&hl=en
Though I don’t see why these two are necessarily in contrast. Take it one step further: Obama thinks choosing the one that works out best for him is the right or perfect answer.
Thank you, thank you.
yeah, i thought so too. But that thing with the aircraft carrier, helicopter and helmet, though it didn’t bother me at the time, looks regretful and a little over-the-top in hindsight.
Me: yeah, i thought so too. But that thing with the aircraft carrier, helicopter and helmet, though it didn’t bother me at the time, looks regretful and a little over-the-top in hindsight.
No offense Troy if you wrote that speech!