The Case for a Panicky President

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Monday, April 13, 2009 at 11:01 am

I woke up this morning to the Grandy and Andy show on 630 WMAL, conservative talkers who gave the president a “B” grade on his handling of the Somilian pirate situation.

“He has saved the world,” grumbled Andy. “You are led to believe that this morning.”

“Had this led to a disastrous outcome we would be blasting the president,” said Grandy. “To the extent that the opposite happened, credit is due. If this is not a test it is certainly a pop quiz and I think the president aced it.”

“I would have given him credit,” said Andy, “had he stepped to the podium last week and said look, we’re taking care of this.”

Most of the callers agreed with Andy, which confuses me.

We had a fairly well-argued debate last year about the wisdom of the president “elevating” rogue states by meeting with their leaders. What could elevate a group of stateless pirates more than the president of the United States issuing a bellicose statement about them, marking them as a great threat to liberty, hunting them to the ends of the earth, and so on?

Knowing what we know now — that the president was monitoring the situation and by Friday night had ordered the successful Navy Seals rescue of the American hostage — it doesn’t make any sense to argue that the president should have made the situation worse. But I’m hearing that all over talk radio.

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Comments

6 Comments

JerseyGirl
Comment posted April 13, 2009 @ 8:32 am

The reason he should have at least made some kind of a statement is because many were worried about the Captain and were looking for leadership from the President; we just wanted to know he was 'working on it' … and not distracted by pizza parties and dog selection!


"Lava" lee pyle
Comment posted April 13, 2009 @ 10:06 am

Sour grapes. No more, no Less. but It is eerie how the timing of this event mirrors that of the downed aircrew that were detained by the chinese around easter of 2001. It's funny, I don't remember W. being Criticized for being patient and cautious.


Roger Ailes
Comment posted April 13, 2009 @ 1:54 pm

Did Gopher mention the episode of The Love Boat where Somali pirates (Ernest Borgnine and Dr. Joyce Brothers) captured Captain Merrill Stubing (Gavin McLeod) and held him for ransom until a recently-separated husband and wife team of Navy Seals (Lorenzo Lamas and Tracy Scoggins) put aside their differences and rescued him.

The man knows from experience you don't negotiate with terrorists (Aaron Spelling).


The Case for a Panicky President
Pingback posted April 13, 2009 @ 3:35 pm

[...] See the original post: The Case for a Panicky President [...]


Lonesome
Comment posted April 14, 2009 @ 12:00 pm

Look, only idiots thought the President wasn't concerned and involved with this. The major idiots took to blaming the President for nothing, absolutly nothing. Critic's stupidity, that's not Obama's fault. Maybe the critics should take a moment to check on themselves, work on their own issues, instead of flying of imagining “pizza parties”…. Just because Bush had his dog write several books doesn't mean the current Commander is a delusional wacko also.


Lonesome
Comment posted April 14, 2009 @ 7:00 pm

Look, only idiots thought the President wasn't concerned and involved with this. The major idiots took to blaming the President for nothing, absolutly nothing. Critic's stupidity, that's not Obama's fault. Maybe the critics should take a moment to check on themselves, work on their own issues, instead of flying of imagining “pizza parties”…. Just because Bush had his dog write several books doesn't mean the current Commander is a delusional wacko also.


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