Monday, May 2, 2011

"Well handled sir. Well handled."

A day after giving the go-ahead to the plan to go after Osama Bin Laden, President Obama was at the White House Correspondence Dinner saying this to Donald Trump.

But all kidding aside, obviously, we all know about your credentials and breadth of experience. For example -- no, seriously, just recently, in an episode of Celebrity Apprentice -- at the steakhouse, the men's cooking team cooking did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks. And there was a lot of blame to go around. But you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership. And so ultimately, you didn't blame Lil' Jon or Meatloaf. You fired Gary Busey. And these are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night. Well handled, sir. Well handled.

He knew damn well how that would play a few days later.

So no, its to you Mr. President that we say..."Well handled, sir. Well handled."

;-)

6 comments:

  1. Yes. Well handled.

    It's all pretty amazing, isn't it? I think people will always remember Trump the Chump's weighty decisions compared with Obama's, and Trump will not measure up well. As if he ever would have anyway.

    But it's way more creepy than funny, to me, that Trump could have at all been considered "presidential material" by anyone. I feel the same about Palin. That these types have any supporters is really scary and depressing.

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  2. I did find, however, the "me-ness" of the speech rather odd and off-putting (as redsquirrel mentioned on the Tomasky Talk thread). "My team," etc. It's so exclusive, as if no one else had a hand in the decision-making, and no one else really deserves the credit, despite his articulated appreciation.

    What do you make of that, Smarty?

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  3. I think its a case of "the buck stops here." He's very comfortable with responsibility.

    If I have time later, I want to write a bit about the idea that he staked his presidency on this. I think its very clear that - in the end - he made the call and went "all in" on this plan. If it had failed, it might have meant the end of his political career.

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  4. Smarty, remember I told you how some of our lefties here in VT are waayyyy left? Well, I'm listening to a call-in show on VPR and a few of the people calling in are expressing their sadness over the "assassination" of bin Laden when he should have been captured, one person even going to far as to insist the right thing to do would have been to subdue him with a stun gun.

    Somehow I can't imagine the Navy Seals armed with stun guns.

    Once I heard a nun here, on the radio, state that not even WWII was a just war and there were any number of peaceful means for dealing with Hitler.

    Why can't we all just use common sense all the time? It would work out a lot better than trying to be perfect in our particular ideologies, which is actually not a sane thing to attempt.

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  5. Robbie

    All I can say is YUK.

    Someday I'll tell you stories about my travails with the crazy liberal ideologue crowd.

    But not enough sleep last night and long day at work today means its time to CHILLLLLLLL.

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  6. Re the 'assassination', I read somewhere on Sullivan that the enemy was given the chance to surrender but refused and was shot. I confess that I lost my 'uneasiness' after reading that. It may be a 'rumour' but somehow reading it helped my mental 'conflict'.

    On the other hand, somehow the 'me-ness' of the speech seemed perfectly in line with my perceptiion of this president, so it did not faze me at all. Like SP I do see the President as being very comfortable in the belief that as the CIC 'the buck stops here', and, I also see him as being quite willing, ready and able to stand guard over his team members. By standing guard I mean that he does not hesitate to deflect possible cricitism (for failure) onto himself. I can't remember an exact example right now, but I've seen him do this before and, as a leader, I respect him for it. None of this pointing of fingers if things go wrong. Of course, the 'down side' of this aspect of his leadership is if all goes well, some people say you were arrogant or selfish. In addition, didn't Brennan say that the President made the final decision to go in?

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