The Johnny Mercer Presidency

One of the members of congress that I worked for had a joke he told to aspiring politicians.  He said a good politician needs to only be able to do three things.   First, they have to be for everything that is good.  Second, they need to be against everything that is bad.  But third, they need to be able to tell the difference between the two.

For the past couple of days the Obama administration has been trying to "spike the Osama Bin Laden football."   They've staged a couple of events, including the President's trip to Afghanistan in which Hamid Karzai was a willing accomplice.  (He has always been such a picture of integrity.)   They have even made the claim that George Romney would not have been willing to make the decision to go after Bin Laden.  (Which is a ridiculous claim on its face.)  

I suspect that the staffer who staged the Bush fly in after the toppling of Hussein has had second thoughts about the efficacy of football spiking in politics.   If the Obama people have any grace they should be a bit chagrined about all this nonsense on the one year anniversary of Bin Laden's death.  The president did make the decision and he should receive credit for that but all the extra claims are silly.

One of Mr. Obama's predecessors had a penchant for cataloguing all of his accomplishments in the style of the old song - accentuate the positive - eliminate the negative. Ultimately all that enumeration did not save Richard Nixon.  A president is ultimately judged on his record.   No matter how successful his spin doctors are in weaving the story, ultimately the voters will make a judgement about whether he deserves re-election.  The stunt(s) in the past few days made this president look a bit smaller.   I would not be surprised to see the following campaign slogan appear soon - Everything good came from me, all the bad things came from George Bush.