Agenda

Obama, PPFA, and the littlest patients

 

 

By Dave Andrusko

President Barack Obama speaks at the Planned Parenthood National Conference.

Out of the blue President Obama called a press conference Tuesday morning to mark the 100 day mark of his second term. As is always the case with Mr. Obama, you have to watch the President to get the full flavor.

Check out his body language, listen to him drop into his favorite mode (a dose of self-pity laced with blame-me-are-you-crazy?), and not surprisingly his lethargic, whiny performance energized his friends in the opinion-writing ranks. In other words, what he lacked, they supplied—or, at least, that’s what they told themselves.

Obama got plenty of advice, the core of which was he was too defensive, too passive, and too willing to pass the buck. Well, excuse me, that’s news?

Everyone latched on to the question of ABC News’s Jonathan Karl who asked Obama (after listening to a litany of problems and crises) if he had the “juice to get the rest of your agenda through?” A clearly piqued Obama responded, “Well, if you put it that way, Jonathan, maybe I should just pack up and go home.”
For good measure he phrased Mark Twain “You know, rumors of my demise may be a little exaggerated.” (The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank quipped, “It’s never a good sign for a president when he feels compelled to assure the public he still has a pulse.”)

Of course, the core of their advice that even though he is too good for the Republican-led House of Representatives, Obama shouldn’t abdicate presidential leadership. “He still thinks he’ll do his thing from the balcony and everyone else will follow along below,” complained the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd. “That’s not how it works.”

My guess is that in a sense Obama set himself up for failure. Everybody loved his performance Saturday at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. Where did THAT guy—poised and clever and charismatic [and scripted]—go 2 ½ days later?
Well, for one thing, Obama wasn’t questioned, didn’t need to explain his policies at the dinner. For another, my guess is Obama is already displaying a fundamental characteristic that goes way back: he is bored.

From our single issue point of view, we would hope his lethargy would extend to pulling back on the death throttle. But that would require us forgetting the speech he gave last Friday to Planned Parenthood.

Warm and fuzzies were the order of the day when Obama and PPFA President Cecile Richards exchanged compliments. If it just weren’t for those pesky pro-lifers who (“after decades of progress”) still “want to turn back the clock to policies more suited to the 1950s than the 21st century.“
Actually what we want to do is restore legal protection that existed until Roe v. Wade launched a death offensive that has already cost the lives of more than 55 million unborn babies.

Obama offered this word of praise: “[W]hen it comes to your patients, you never let them down — no matter what.” We would remind him—and PPFA—that they did let down over 333,000 patients in 2011—the littlest and most defenseless patients of them all.

Source: NRLC News