PRESIDENTIAL PARANOIA

We have not warmed to President Obama yet. Having spent much of our life in the San Francisco Bay area, we remember the cult followings of Reverend Sun Myung Moon and the People’s Temple Jim Jones. From the Iowa Democratic Primary campaign to Tuesday’s mega Woodstock that was the inauguration, we have been reluctant to jump on the Obama bandwagon. It’s not that we don’t long for a President than can renew our enthusiasm for the promise that is America. It’s just that we don’t really believe in love at first sight. After all we married the girl next door whom we had known since we were 14.

We have watched President Obama as closely as if he had just started dating our only daughter. After all, we just met him a little over year ago, for us a too brief courtship. Frankly we don’t know much more about him now than we did a year ago…nice looking chap, good education, well spoken, but questionable antecedents and associations and, above all, few accomplishments. Nonetheless, the wedding is over, the American people have made this unknown suitor our President. The fact that he is now part of the family does not mean he has proved himself yet. We are encouraged by the quickness and decisiveness of his actions. He has already issued executive orders to close Guantanamo and end torture, actions we applaud. However, we witnessed something yesterday, that gave us our first glimpse of the real man behind the hype.

During a swearing in ceremony of White House staffers, Vice President Joseph Biden, when asked to adminster the oath, joked about Chief Justice John Roberts’ well publicized gaff during the inaugural. President Obama grabbed his arm, whispered something into his ear, and stepped back, the familiar smile completely gone. We’ve seen puppies that soiled the carpet corrected less severely. Poor Joe Biden is in for a long stretch. Later that day Chief Justice Roberts would be summoned to the White House to readminster the Presidential oath in a fit of presidential paranoia unseen since the Nixon administration. What may be just a footnote in Presidential history (it’s been done twice before without much notice) has offered us a glimpse of Obama’s modus operandi.

• First, there was an orchestrated effort to control the media’s portrayal of the event. Only four members of the press were allowed to view the redo swearing in. No video was allowed, though audio of the event has surfaced. It is unclear if said audio was authorized.
• Second, a carefully worded press release deemed the redo not required, but undertaken, “…out of an abundance of caution…” Today, in his first press briefing, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, repeated the “abundance of caution” mantra several times. He might have said, “just in case” or “to be sure”, but he didn’t, signaling that future responses to the press will be carefully scripted by the Obama inner circle.
  

We hope that what looks like paranoia is, in fact, an abundance of caution, and that President Obama will continue to act forcefully and not be paralyzed by an obsession to control all around him. In the meantime, we would love to have that body language expert from the Bill O’Reilly show assess that arm grabbing move. Around here, if you grab your kid or wife like that, you’ll end up in family court.