White House Professionalism
I am giving the new Obama White House the benefit of the doubt that things have been hastily done because there are more pressing priorities. I am hoping civility and manners are soon adopted by this new administration.
What am I talking about? Under Additional Issues on the official White House website, it is apparently appropriate to pimp your bestselling books AND knock former presidents. Is this practice common with new administrations?
Personally, I was lukewarm to President Obama's inaugural address on Tuesday. It felt more like a sucker punch to the outgoing president than a great speech. By no means am I a George W. Bush fan, but I do believe you can get the same point across with a little more subtlety.
I urge President Obama to remove his book advertisements, delete the sharp criticisms of our 43rd President under Katrina tab, and consult with someone before any future speeches and text are approved.
The reason I am stating all this is because I want to uphold the esteem of the Oval Office. Political season is over. Time to lead.
posted by Brettcajun at Friday, January 23, 2009
24 Comments:
I think you would be the perfect person to guide our new president on subtlety and not pimping himself on his own website. It's a little late for him to get your advice on the inaugural address, but there's no reason he shouldn't want it on future communications. So give el presidente a warm Southern shout-out, Brett. And, please, do NOT hesitate to rip him whenever he does something that is not pleasing to your fine sensibilities.
You know, Brett..no offense, but this is just silly. You are behaving like those talking heads on Fox News and the like, who will look for any little think to make a complaint about. The fact that we are three days into the new administration and you're already picking it apart is really middle-school. So, he is selling abook. Big F*cking Deal. Is it harming the country? No. You might not think it's the "right" thing to do, and you are certainly entitled to feel that way, but I think you are smart enough to think on a much higher level than that. Complain about things that MATTER. REAL ISSUES. Pushing a book is NOTHING when compared with the economy, equal rights, the war, etc. If the worst thing you can come up with is a book, then we must be doing great.
Regarding the bashing of Bush on the website, I assume you are talking about the administration vowing to fulfill the "broken promises by Bush" in regards to Katrina. That's hardly a bash. It's very pointed yes, but hardly a bash. Especially since it is pretty much universally agreed that Bush screwed up and hasn't done much to help the area recover. It's not a bash. It's a fact. You want it to be a bash so you have more fuel for your dislike of Obama.
And given you are a citizen of the Gulf Coast area, I can't believe that you are not THRILLED that the new administration wants to make the rebuilding of area a priority.
Maybe it's because you still have a home and were not affected as much by the storm. I don't know. But, if you are unable to see beyond how things effect you personally, then you completely missed the point of the lukewarm inauguration speech. Basically, in his speech he said that this country is damaged (physically, fiscally, spritually, emotionally, and any number of other of adverbs) and that it is going to take all of us working together and for each other to put it back together again.
So, join us in rebuilding, Brett. And stop tearing down.
Sorry for the hijack..but it just came pouring out of me.
Look Mary... I LOATHE George W. Bush and Fox News!
The reason I wrote this blog post is because I want President Obama to uphold the esteem and tradition of the Oval Office.
What if the official White House website had a criticisms of former President Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky?
The political season is over. Political potshots should not be on the official White House website. It's not professional in my book.
The esteem of the Oval Office has been improved immeasurably by the removal of the malfeasant, dishonest, and hopelessly unintelligent mediocrity that finished his term at 11:59 a.m. on Tuesday.
The past three days have been an incomparable joy. Watching my President stand at a podium without feeling revulsion or nausea..... not having to dread the mangled syntax, the egregious malapropisms and mispronunciations, all thickly coated with phony, folksy, Texas-style "charm".
At last we have a President with intellectual vigor, moral clarity, and the engaged curiosity of someone who wants the best advice, even if it comes from someone smarter than he is.
There are a great many legal scholars who believe Bush was guilty of impeachable offenses. There are many international law scholars who contend that Bush committed war-crimes and should be tied at the Hague.
We're in a near-depression, at war in two nations, and the global climate crisis is worse than feared, and Brett, all you choose to bitch about are book advertisements on a website and an Inaugural Address that you were disappointed in for whatever backwoods, redneck, illogical reason ???!!!!
Grow the fuck up. You've wrung your hands and cried crocodile tears for a dead chicken more than you've bitched about the ABYSMAL Presidency of George W. Bush. And now you criticize President Obama for such irrelevant trivialities??? You are either willfully provocative or psychotically deluded.
I'm going to Popeye's.........
Um,
no, I disagree.
why do you hate America?
First of all, Popeyes is going to make you fat, unless you play a lot of tennis like me.
Secondly, I think George W. Bush is the worst President we have ever had. I am not disputing that.
My point is that Obama's team can do a lot better. You don't hawk books or crucify a former president the way he did on an official government website.
It's just not right. If we allow this, then what will the next Republican administration do? Hawk Rush and Hannity if they ever seize back power?
Brett, repeat after me: "I am a dumbshit. I was trying to get a rise and generate some controversy and maybe even pull in some comments to make up for my recent drought. I miscalculated and I said stupid things. Stupid things that honestly, I'm well aware, don't make a whole lot of sense, either as humor or provocation. It will never happen again. Because I have more respect for myself. And I know after awhile playing the village idiot is a lousy strategy for winning a popularity contest. I'm really a cool guy with an at times twisted sense of humor. Really!! And I'm sorry for being such a moron, guys. I'm really not that much of an idiot." Just do it and we'll be able to believe in your hot Southern tennis loving wonderful-nesss again.
I don't give a damn what you comment trolls think. I am holding on to my convictions.
Political season is over. The Official website for the White House should not slam former Presidents or hawk books. It sets a horrible precedence!
I think some Junior Staffer just copied and pasted a bunch of campaign pledges rather than coming up with something more suitable.
Just my opinion. I don't care if you don't share my views.
Hmmm....i thought he's gone pretty easy on Bush thus far. I could not be as kind when my predecessor was THAT bad.
In fact, at the moment, i'm cleaning up some giant-ass messes that my work colleague who just quit so kindly left me.
If she ever gets within bitch-slapping distance, I am pretty sure I could get arrested.
Also, it's going to take the transition people a few months to grow out of campaign mode. If this is the worst manners we see from the President and his administration, we should be so lucky.
Ordinarily, I come on here to tweak Brett (and I still plan to) but in this case, I'm coming to his defense.
As I read the post, Brett is not saying "Obama is a louse for doing this." He is not saying "This ruins the Obama presidency." He is not saying "Gee, we made a mistake in electing this guy."
He is saying, point blank, "This particular posting, the wording he chose, may be accurate, it may be honest, it may be truthful, but it need not have been said and is needlessly provocative."
For a president who campaigned endlessly on changing the tone in Washington, who stressed that he was hoping to move past the partisan jabs and winner-take-all mentality that has so corroded people's trust and support of the federal government - this was a step backwards.
He could easily have left the words "made by President Bush" out of the sentence in question and conveyed the same information without the jab at his predecessor.
One can be supportive of one's leader - the one you voted for - and still acknowledge when he makes a mistake. One of the few decent conventions left in Washington, one of the few gracious things we have been able to count on, is that ex-presidents do not publicly criticize their successors and that sitting presidents do not speak ill of their predecessors. I'd rather that be the building block of a new era of civility with less finger-pointing, than to see it become the final victim of partisan bitching.
Hmmm...Brett...you've edited out some of the original text of this post, no? It's a lot more polite than what i read earlier today.
Mary, the Comment Troll
There are a lot of people in southeast Texas and southwest LA that suffered the wrath of Ike that would like to get the attention/help Katrina victims got.
I agree about the speech but I'm sure I was expecting too much.
Are you stirring up shit again? I can't leave you alone for 5 mins can I? lol
I know you wrote this to stir it you attention whore. I won't launch into my diatribe about it.
I will say Obama has made me actually want to watch politics again!
Even though he and I seem to be like oil and water, I have to agree, in part, with what Tony has stated.
It's only day 3 of his administration. I'm not saying we should be soft on President Obama, but neither should we start ripping him apart. He has inherited a shit load of problems that won't be solved overnight, so cut the man some slack, realize that he is human just like the rest of us and is bound to make mistakes, and give the guy the benefit if the doubt and some breathing room.
He has a lot of things to address and we need to be right there helping the cause as well as keeping them honest.
I'll let you in on a little secret. Fox News is neither.
My hen is prettier than your cock!!!
Curtis--
I don't see Brett's comments as "ripping [Obama] apart"... he only pointed out that on this particular issue, he believes Obama is wrong in the choice of words he used on the official White House website. Not his campaign website, mind you - but the taxpayer-funded, official information site for the executive branch of the federal government.
CJ - Having been through much of Cameron Parish's formerly populated areas since Katrina, I know that yes, Hurricane Ike did considerable damage. However, that was *hurricane* damage - a natural disaster, and which we expect, living on the Gulf Coast. The actual hurricane damage from Katrina was (comparatively) mild; it was the collapse of the federally-designed, federally-built levee system in New Orleans that caused the overwhelming majority of the damage. That's not a natural disaster; it's a man-made one, caused by the negligence of the federal government, and as such, it's of a different caliber of debt to the people affected.
I am not suggesting that federal assistance is unnecessary; FEMA routinely provides assistance after natural disasters, including tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, mudslides, blizzards, and more. But that's assistance that the government has chosen to provide, as a safety net. As long as aid is distributed reasonably equitably from one disaster (including adjustments for severity) to the next, I'm happy.
The government's debt to Katrina victims, however, is far different. Through federal, state, and local taxes, we paid for the feds to design and build us a levee system precisely to prevent flooding from hurricanes and storm surges. They did a faulty job, their works collapsed, and more than three quarters of the city was under water, in some cases for a couple of weeks.
I'm sorry, you just cannot compare Katrina and Ike and say they're equivalent. They aren't even in the same category of problem.
So if Obama were gay, what sub-category would he fall in to?? Otter? Silver Fox? Who's your Daddy-in-Chief?
Sorry, trying to lighten the mood here... I think we all need to stand back a bit... get 100 days out the way, then start forming our opinions. No matter who stepped into this mess that the country is in now, it is going to take a lot of effort from all sides to bring us back... Let the system do what it needs to do... Let the President do what he thinks he needs to do... Our attention has only been recently drawn to the White House website because a bunch of gay bloggers noticed the there were good things said in favor of LGBT rights... Brett, don't take offense to this next statement---
Before Obama took office I don't think many (not all, but many) of us even looked at the White House website under the Bush admin... so I dont really have anything to compare the current site to... if someone has a link, I would love to see it...but really, have any of us paid attention to it until now?? Good for you Brett pointing out some things that don't float your boat... and I am sure there are things on previous WH sites that did not float the Republican Boat... The President cannot be everything to everyone... give it time and lets see what happens...
Also, Brett... i love the fact that you put it all out there as to what is on your mind, on the court, in the bed, or in politics... that is what we have our blogs for and it also strikes up great back and forth like this post has... smooches, nipple tugs and hugz...
The US economy had a net loss of nearly 2.6 million jobs, the worst annual decline since 1945 during the Bush adminstration and thousands of jobs are being lost daily.
I couldn't help but comment on this post for the mere fact that you're more worried about the official White House website content and the bruised feelings of an outgoing lame duck President.
It's a well know fact by your past post you're not a fan of President Obama an that's ok.
We get it Brett, every mis-step by the Obama Administration is going to be highlighted by you and a " I told you so" post will follow.
That is not true Mike. I am thrilled Obama is our President. Read the official White House site. It is simply filled with stuff from the political campaign. It should be something more grand and Presidential. But it is not. It reads like a campaign fundraiser website.
Mike is right-on and just as you will be paying close attention to all his acts and deeds, so will I be calling you on your Obama-hating bias as it unfolds. It's interesting nobody states what's really behind your barely concealed distate for our President. But it IS transparent, BC.
Can we go back to commenting on Brett's cock now?
Mike is so Hot I just wanna pass out............(sorry. Just had to say it.)
what dickspot said!
except i'm getting pizza and i don't give a shit if its fattening. i work out five days a week!
love it when you stir shit up!
Why does every one always get on your case about politics? It was simply an observation about the website.
I saw your point and took it in the light it was intended.
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