Obama's new car joke
As we, the politically obsessed, already know, Pres. Obama has been using a metaphor of a car in a ditch for several months to remind audiences that Republicans held the White House in 2007-08 when the housing bubble burst and the financial sector almost collapsed. The Repubs are the ones that drove us into the ditch, Obama says. Then they stood on the road and criticized while the Dems struggled to get the car out of the ditch. Then, when the Dems finally had the car out of the ditch, the Repubs said "give us back the keys."
The routine does well, with Dem audiences. Yesterday, at a Texas fund-raiser for the Dem Senatorial Campaign Committee, he added a new punchline. It goes like this (quoting from the transcript of his Texas talk, and picking up from the point in the analogy/anecdote where the Repubs have asked for the keys):
No, you can’t have the keys back -- you don’t know how to drive. (Applause.) You don’t know how to drive. They don’t know how to drive. [And here's the new wrinkle]
And I also want to point out, by the way, when you want to go forward in a car, what do you do? You put it in “D.” (Laughter.) When you want to go backwards, you put it in “R.” (Laughter.) We cannot go backwards -- we’ve got to move forwards. That’s what we’re fighting for in this election -- moving forwards. (Applause.)"
In the interest of fair and balanced reporting, I add, since googling up reaction to the joke, that CNSNews asked U.S. Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., what he thought of the president's new joke, and he replied:
“I’d say D is for dumb and R is for reform.
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Comments (16)
Let's just ignore the "D is for dumb" part for the moment and wonder – in bemusement and surprise – just what a Georgia Republican might mean by "reform" in the current context.
Considering the widespread disapproval of the Democrat "cash for junkers" debacle, many people might be excused for wondering if having Senator* Franken write his jokes is another bad decision for PBO.
For the most part, it appears to me that while...
Democrats (*) dispel despair ...
Republicans (**) retard recovery!
-------------------------------------
(*) - have generally been saying and doing positive things, although they have not been too discriminating who they bail out.
(**) - have generally been saying NO to practically everything, and not offering anything new ... just the same old more "tax cuts" and borrow and spend.
Considering that the housing sector was in collapse, the economy in meteoric freefall, and the financial sector a smoking ruin when W handed over the keys to Obama, it boggles the mind that anyone - of any persuasion - would seriously consider putting the Repubs back in the driver's seat.
The only explanation is that the average American has the memory of an Alzheimer's patient, the patience of the wind, and the attention span of a gnat.
Then again, even at its current level, Obama's approval rating is about 20 pts higher than that of congressional Repubs, so perhaps folks are a little smarter than I give them credit for.
Gotta love Swiftie's postings....the "widespread disapproval" that exists in Swiftie's universe.
Sounds rather desperate to me.
It may be convenient to forget that many of the changes that brought on the crisis were passed by dem congresses, and sometimes by dem presidents. But it won't pass the "whole truth" test.
And any president who, going on two years into his term, persists in blaming the guy before him begins to sound a little whiny.
For most folks, politics boils down to "what have you done for me LATELY?" and Obama's score on that basis accounts for his tanking approval ratings.
We'll see how well it plays out in November.
John, how long does it take to clean up an eight-year mess?
Shouldn't the president be given a decent grace period, one even longer than two years?
I mean really, eight years is four times as long as two years.
Mr. Iacono posted:
"And any president who, going on two years into his term, persists in blaming the guy before him begins to sound a little whiny."
I would agree, if the blame wasn't fair. But it is. Yes, Democrats contributed (in 1998) to setting up conditions for the housing bubble - with bipartisan enthusiastic support by Republicans. It was Republicans who insisted that the derivatives market remain regulation free back then. And it was the Republicans who insisted on tax cuts even though federal revenues were declining - and maintaining those tax cuts even though our Republican president at the time took us into pre-emptive war, while failing to hold the 9/11/01 attackers to account - all at gigantic expense of treasure and the blood of our citizens.
So to me, President Obama's car analogy works pretty well as analogies go. If it's the truth, it's not whining. To me, anyway
I agree with John. Simplistic analogies to complex issues are not "Presidential" at a minimum, and whiny at worst.
A more accurate analogy would be that the Republican's were driving the Democrat's Toyota, and made no attempt to apply the brakes. But they both spent a lot of time greasing the axles.
One thing's for certain this election season, Obama and the dems won't be asking Reagan's famous question: "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?"
(2006 unemployment = 4.6%)
"It may be convenient to forget that many of the changes that brought on the crisis were passed by dem congresses, and sometimes by dem presidents. But it won't pass the "whole truth" test."
That is a reasonable point to make, which brings us back to: who's trying to move us forward and who's trying to go in reverse?
Republicans are saying both that the deficits are a disaster AND that we can't let the Bush tax cuts expire. What's the solution then? If you cut spending in order to maintain the Bush tax cuts, you have to shrink government - which means firing people, which means adding to the ranks of the unemployed. And this is supposed to be an economic improvement? Who is foolish enough to believe that?
Tim - you're being too kind to both the Repugs and the DLC to say it's a mess that's only 8 years in the making . . . 30 is more like it. And "our" boy Bill (with help from Phil Gram) continued us down the disastrous road Ronnie (is that you, Mommy?) set us on.
The first thing to mind upon reading "Obama's New Car Joke, was the Cash-for-Clunkers or "CARS" program. I think one or two people got jobs to figure out how to shoe-horn the title of the program into the "CARS" acronym.
Lora- Who said anything about 8 years? I'd say it's more like 50
I just got the joke; it is for people who drive cars with automatic transmissions. We waste millions of barrels of oil each year because we are too lazy to shift our transmissions.
(#8)Howard Miller:
I know some won't like the source (Fox News Poll), but it seems 76% of those polled agree that blaming Bush is getting old:
"Despite more voters faulting former President Bush's policies for the country's economic woes, most American voters think it is time for President Obama to stop blaming Bush.
Nearly half of voters — 47 percent — think Bush's policies are mostly to blame for the economic difficulties the country is having today, compared to 32 percent who think Obama's policies are to blame.
Even so, fully 76 percent of voters think it is time for the Obama administration to start taking responsibility for the condition of the economy. That's more than four times as many as think it is right to continue to place the blame on Bush (18 percent)."
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/08/12/fox-news-poll-percent-say-tim...