Obama Turns Serious on Letterman

continued his alternative media outlet blitz Monday, telling David Letterman that he will be “asking some very hard questions” before deciding whether to send additional troops to Afghanistan.

The First Guest initially was looking relaxed during the taping of the “Late Show,” as he traded quips with Mr. Letterman about his daughters’ future dating prospects (their future boyfriends may get stressed out by the men with guns who hang around) and what happens to the parents of school-kids who have Malia and Sasha over for sleep-overs (they get frisked). There was even a head-scratcher that involved a heart-shaped potato
Obama understands what Teddy Roosevelt saw so well - the office is a “bully pulpit.” (That is, for the benefit of vocabulary-starved Repubs, “bully” in the TR sense, of “excellent” rather than “bully” in the GWB/Cheney sense of “juvenile schoolyard brute.”)


That is, in fact, the main power that the office holds - the president writes no bills, neither makes nor enforces laws, and - in a properly run government - needs the permission or approval of the legislative or judicial branch to do anything important. (In the previous eight years, of course, the ignoramus in chief, neither knowing nor caring about the constitutional limits of the office’s powers, led an equally complacent and ignorant nation off the rails.)

I like this guy. It’s so nice to have a president who isn’t a lout. He’s smart, and has an unscripted sense of humour. I think he’s better than the American people deserve. He belongs to an earlier, better era, of the striver - people who aspired to be better, smarter, more generous, better educated, etc. than their selves of the day before.

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