Voices of Anxiety
By BOB HERBERT
NYT
Barack Obama is a guy who is easy to underestimate. Six years ago hardly anyone outside of Illinois had ever heard of him. Now he’s America’s first Zen-master president.
On Thursday, he made a jocular reference to the tendency of pundits and others to declare periodically that he’s off his game and headed for disaster. He noted that in August 2008, with his poll numbers wavering and the Republicans energized by the addition of Sarah Palin to the national ticket, a lot of people were convinced that, as he put it, “Obama’s lost his mojo.”
“You remember all that?” he asked, smiling. “There is something about August going into September where everybody in Washington gets all wee-weed up.”
Wee-weed up? I don’t know what that means, but the president seemed pretty relaxed when he said it. This was the same day that he went on a radio program and did his Joe Namath routine, guaranteeing that health care reform would get done.
The president may be sanguine, but the same cannot be said of the general public, including some of Mr. Obama’s most ardent supporters. The American people are worried sick over the economy, which may be sprouting green shoots from Ben Bernanke’s lofty perspective but not from the humble standpoint of the many millions who are unemployed, or those who are still working but barely able to pay their bills and hold onto their homes.
(More here.)
NYT
Barack Obama is a guy who is easy to underestimate. Six years ago hardly anyone outside of Illinois had ever heard of him. Now he’s America’s first Zen-master president.
On Thursday, he made a jocular reference to the tendency of pundits and others to declare periodically that he’s off his game and headed for disaster. He noted that in August 2008, with his poll numbers wavering and the Republicans energized by the addition of Sarah Palin to the national ticket, a lot of people were convinced that, as he put it, “Obama’s lost his mojo.”
“You remember all that?” he asked, smiling. “There is something about August going into September where everybody in Washington gets all wee-weed up.”
Wee-weed up? I don’t know what that means, but the president seemed pretty relaxed when he said it. This was the same day that he went on a radio program and did his Joe Namath routine, guaranteeing that health care reform would get done.
The president may be sanguine, but the same cannot be said of the general public, including some of Mr. Obama’s most ardent supporters. The American people are worried sick over the economy, which may be sprouting green shoots from Ben Bernanke’s lofty perspective but not from the humble standpoint of the many millions who are unemployed, or those who are still working but barely able to pay their bills and hold onto their homes.
(More here.)
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