The Dating Game
Headlines scream “Obama Date Night Draws GOP Fire” and “GOP Crying Foul Over Obamas Romantic Trip”.
Question: Why is the GOP making a stink over the Obamas flying to New York for a romantic evening?
Answer: Because the press won’t do it!
Barack and Michelle Obama jetted to New York City for a date night to dine at a fancy restaurant, “a seminal Greenmarket haven”, and take in a Broadway play about black struggles in the early 1900’s.
I understand that the President of the United States does not take a vow of poverty. Presidents, like most successful politicians, are usually fairly wealthy, including this one who made millions by being credited as author of not one but two ghostwritten “autobiographies”.
I also understand that the president is entitled to a personal life with his wife and family, particularly one like Obama with a young family. I could not care less what kind of mustard the president asks for on his hamburger during what are becoming his semi-regular lunch excursions to burger stands in DC. Frankly, I find it exceedingly more desirable that this president goes out for a nibble than the previous Democrat president who opened his own weenie stand in the oval office and invited aides to take one.
What I don’t understand is how the Washington press core hammered George Walker Bush on every personal trip he made, regardless of the destination, yet when Barack Hussein Obama, the president of cap and trade and mandatory energy conservation, boards a private jet to New York City to take his wife to dinner the silence from the same bastions of truth and fairness is deafening.
I am not saying that Barack and Michelle Obama don’t deserve a night on the town. It’s got to be nice to have a dinner without his live-in mother-in-law sitting there. But at a time when other wealthy men, like the CEO’s of the automakers, are publicly flogged for taking their private planes to Washington DC it seems more than a bit disingenuous when the President and his First Lady do the same thing on the taxpayers dime for a nice dinner and a Broadway play.
I get it that the CEO’s can fly coach without having to make the same special security arrangements that are necessary for the president. But the security and personnel needed for this type of romantic adventure for the Obamas only furthers the point. When the president travels it is no small or inexpensive affair.
While the president’s private jet did not buzz the office buildings in downtown Manhattan for a photo-op, I am certain it caused a carbon footprint at least equal to the carbon footprint left by Al Gore’s private jet when he last visited Washington to discuss the dangers of our carbon footprints.
The bottom line is you simply can’t have it both ways. Either you’re for wealthy people doing the things that wealthy people do, like flying their private jets to quant and romantic getaways, or you are for wealth redistribution and imposed energy conservation.
The other key issue is that wealthy people fly to these locations on their own money; the president takes his wife out to dinner and a show on ours. Am I to believe that there was no way for this president/husband to keep his promise to his wife for a night on the town by tying it into a presidentially related trip to New York?
But my biggest question remains, why is the White House press corps not asking these questions? With all the outrage at what CEO’s and brokers on Wall Street are paid, why is this Obama trip viewed as a husband being considerate to his wife? Don’t the Wall Street CEO’s and brokers have spouses that they have made promises to as well? If the CEO’s tried to expense a date night like this against their companies expense accounts they could be charged with tax fraud.
I’m waiting for Helen Thomas to ask these questions.
I’ll probably be waiting a while.
