Karl
Patterico’s Pontifications
8/11/2011
HotAir’s Allahpundit and Ed Morrissey were just having an interesting Twitter discussion with the Daily Caller’s Mary Katharine Ham about Pres. Obama’s planned vacation on Martha’s Vineyard later this month.
They began where a lot of conservatives end, with the notion that the attacks on a vacationing president are generally unfair, but that the double standard imposed by the establishment and its media — here perfectly personified by White House flack Jay Carney — is the root of conservative complaint.
However, Allahpundit then added: “Disagree. This is an extraordinary economic moment. Not only is he disengaged, he doesn’t even care if he looks it.” Ed picked up the point: “He is missing an opportunity to stay in WH and point out the fact that Congress went home.” Allahpundit then added a seemingly comic spin: “It’s an opportunity for him to finally finally put out his own plan and push it. He has DC all to himself.” The joke, of course, is that Obama has no plan to address either the medium-term debt bomb or the shorter-term (one hopes) weakness of the economy.
This vacation is a missed opportunity for Obama, both substantively and politically, though the latter is the focus here. Obama currently finds himself at a low in the polls; the economy remains in bad shape. In modern history, only Truman managed to eke out re-election from a position this bad…
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