Have Obama’s image handlers been on vacation, too?

Great column here about how Obama’s image makers and news shapers have been falling down on the job in the last 2 weeks.

And as Vicki writes here, the images that the White House is putting out are less than flattering. Smug-down-his-nose pictures of Obama with Biden, an empty oval office… what’s the message being sent to the American people? This whole year has been about image from the WH. What’s happened to Axelrod?

The One’s on television 3 times a day but let someone try to blow up a plane over Detroit and he’s mousy mum for 4 days! Does he not think that the American people needed to hear some reassurance after this Christmas day terrorist attack? That we needed to know that the LEADER was on top of this?

Make no mistake about it: the bomb may not have gone off but the attack was successful, just the same. We are scared, we are off balance, we are confused and we were surprised. And the president has been golfing and snorkeling and dining in a $4000/night estate. We have over 10% unemployment and he’s vacationing like this?

Again, it’s about image and lack of attention to it. The real Obama seems to be emerging.

This may be the end of the Blame Bush narrative

From another excellent editorial via RedState, from the London Telegraph.

“In his weekly radio address yesterday, President Barack Obama patted himself on the back for having “refocused the fight – bringing to a responsible end the war in Iraq, which had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks”.

He then told people to remember that “our adversaries are those who would attack our country, not our fellow Americans”, before decrying “fear and cynicism” and “partisanship and division” – the code phrases for horrid Republicans used during his 2008 election campaign.”

I don’t believe that people are going to stand for this shrugging responsibility any longer. He may choose to continue using the “I inherited” this or that but it’s worn out and won’t fly with Americans any more. Continuing to claim that “we’re just doing what Bush put in place” is no excuse for lack of attention to the numerous markers we had about the Knickerbomber, long before he boarded that Detroit flight.

“For a man who campaigned denouncing the politicisation of national security under President George W Bush, it is worth noting how intensely political Obama’s treatment of what might henceforth be known as Underpantsgate has been.

His White House recognised its political vulnerability more readily than it comprehended the level of danger faced by Americans.”

“In Hawaii, where Obama was holidaying, Gibbs’s deputy Bill Burton told the press that “we are winding down a war in Iraq that took our eye off of the terrorists that attacked us” and that Obama was reviewing “procedures that have been in place the last several years” (i.e. Bush instituted them). He added, without apparent irony, that “the President refuses to play politics with these issues”.”

Keep this up – and I hope they do – because it promises only a one term nightmare for America.

Politcal ads that come back and bite you in the…

Erick Erickson/Red State on Obama being too busy, in the words of Dick Cheney, “restructuring the American society” to be paying attention to protecting our nation:

The question is: if Obama is too busy working on health care to take that 3 a.m. phone call, who is answering the phone?

Mark Steyn: Brilliant… as usual

I wish I could see things as plainly as he does and write them even a fraction as well. I hope you can take the time to read it today. He has a great way of putting all kinds of things into perspective.

I think he has coined the absolute best name for this Christmas day terrorist: the Knickerbomber. And a new terrific name for Janet Napolitano – Janet Incompetano.

This is a superb column.