A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.Aimai applies this rather brilliantly to the Obama administration's response on the Gulf.
Obama and his whole team--and this includes Gibbs--have to start to grasp that they have a duty to set the narrative the voters want if they want the voters to support what they are doing. Its great that we have the world's smartest, coolest, most sciency President. I really mean that. He suits me to a T. But I'm not the median voter. I'm not a swing voter. Lots of other people are. Getting the people to continue supporting you and your party is not a distraction from the job, it is the job. There's no other way to be in office than to run for office constantly. You don't get to relax and just be yourself. Give the voters what they want emotionally while doing what you have decided to do rationally. If you want people to feel good about what you are doing you need to market it agressively. You need to demonstrate it any way you can because the people you are talking to--the voters--are really busy, really stupid, really anxious, really indifferent. So do it, already. Use words, pictures, semaphore, morse code, cave paintings, puppets, or interpretive fucking dance. But however you need to do it, for different constituences, go ahead and do it.And Aimai's got it down cold. Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.
It's not a question of "Is Obama angry enough?" or not. It's "Has Obama made the case politically as to why they are responding in this way, and why this is the best real response to the problem?" The answer to that question on a visceral level is "no". I understand it's absolutely impossible to "win" the 48 hour political news cycle when you're into day 48 of the crisis. The Village assures that.
But you damn well better be trying harder than this.
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