The Donald蘑菇视频 鈥渂obing鈥� problem
“The way President Obama runs down the stairs of Air Force 1, hoping (sic), bobing (sic) and jumping all the way, is so inelegant and so unpresidential.”
— Billionaire/entrepreneur/reality TV show host/failed birther, Donald Trump on Twitter
As if Donald Trump doesn’t have better things to do, he’s become an expert on presidential etiquette. He’s has taken to Twitter to announce that President Obama is being “unpresidential” when he disembarks from Air Force One.
First, he should have run his little criticisms of the president past Spell Check before he issued them. He wrote “hoping,” when he meant hopping. He wrote “bobing,” when he meant bobbing. Trump, more than anybody, should know that the president doesn’t really take silly tirades seriously.
Trump had been one of the country’s leading “birthers” back in 2011. He even claimed he sent “investigators” to Hawaii to find out if Obama was really born in the U.S.
In April of 2011, when the president released his official birth certificate, Trump responded — badly. He took credit for it.
“I’m proud of myself, because I’ve accomplished something no one else was able to do,” Trump told reporters.
Trump didn’t realize he was being set up. Three days later, he appeared at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Obama came prepared with some well-planned zingers directed at Trump.
“No one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than ‘The Donald.’ And that’s because he can finally get back to the issues that matter, like, did we fake the moon landing?” Obama joked.
All cameras were focused on Trump. You could hear the attendees laugh, while he had the look on his face of a man whose Ex-Lax was doing its job — at the wrong time.
Trump isn’t alone in taking ill-conceived potshots at Obama. John McCain’s biggest mistake, Sarah Palin, tried to make a big deal out of the fact that Obama enlisted the help of a Marine to hold an umbrella for him during a rainy news conference.
“Mr. President, when it rains it pours, but most Americans hold their own umbrellas,” she said.
It didn’t take long for right-wingers to take Palin’s lead and run with it. Some even called the president’s use of a Marine to hold an umbrella for him “an abuse of power.” Too bad that there were pictures of George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan online, standing at podiums as military personnel held umbrellas for them. There’re also a couple of pictures of Palin being escorted by umbrella-holding aides.
There always seem to be some (supposed) dastardly deeds engaged in by Obama that resonate with gleeful conservatives, until somebody discovers he’s no different than any of his processors.
He’s supposedly gone on vacation more than other presidents. Not true. He’s taken a third of the vacation days as George W. Bush and half as many as Ronald Reagan at the same time in their presidencies.
He’s supposedly running an imperial presidency because of his use of executive orders. Not true, either. According to the Brookings Institution, “At his current rate of 0.09 executive orders per day in office, Obama is issuing orders at the slowest rate since Grover Cleveland.”
In January of 2009, the day after Obama took office, he’d hardly had time to unpack, when he was photographed without a suit coat while he worked in the Oval Office. He was already being accused of being “unpresidential.”
“I think it’s appropriate to have an expectation that there will be a dress code that respects the office of the president,” said Andy Card, the former White House Chief of Staff during George W. Bush’s first term.
Card probably should have hidden those online pictures of his former boss, working away in the Oval Office without a suit coat — and just two days after his inauguration. In fact, there are pictures of Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Gerald Ford, John F. Kennedy and Jimmy Carter working in the Oval Office without them, too.
The only thing that makes Obama different from other presidents?
He doesn’t need a suntan. Maybe that’s the real problem.
Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. Email him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net