Politics

Obama’s Picnic: Campaign Pablum And Personal-Pronoun Salad

Neil Munro White House Correspondent
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President Barack Obama invited all of Congress and their families to a summer picnic, but he served up a campaign speech sandwiched between large dollops of the personal pronoun.

That’s not the best way to reverse the deepening assumption in D.C. that Obama is out of touch with legislators, personally reluctant to mingle with his constitutional inferiors, and unable to persuade either Democrats or Republicans to jointly risk political damage for consensus policies that benefit the nation.

Obama began the six-minute, 780-word speech by saying “Hello, everybody! It is a perfect night for a picnic” — and followed that up with seven sentences beginning with “I.”

“I’m thrilled that everybody is here. I took off my tie — I noticed some of you didn’t get the memo. But I know that a lot of you are coming straight from work. I’m not going to make a long speech. I want to shake as many hands as possible. I hope you guys are having a wonderful time,” said Obama.

The central part of the speech was merely stump-speech boilerplate, complete with a jab at the GOP.

“America is now positioned better than we could have ever imagined,” he said.

“If we continue to act in the interests of all of us, and if every once in a while we’re willing to set aside politics and try to get something done, there’s no doubt that we can make sure our schools work better. There’s no doubt that we can make sure that our roads and our bridges and our infrastructure works the way it should,” he said, as if Hill legislators were low-information voters on a some college campus in northern Virginia.

“There’s no doubt that, since we still have the most innovative companies in the world, that we can succeed and that we can continue to put money into research and development and cure diseases, and continue to lead the world when it comes to not just security but also dealing with issues like Ebola and making sure that more people are safe and well-housed and well-fed, and children and girls are getting the kind of education they deserve,” he continued.

He did include a graceful comment to the families of the politicians at the event.

“Being married to a politician is not easy. And being the partner of a politician, being the child of a politician — it’s hard,” he said. “And sometimes you see your loved one attacked, and sometimes you seem not appreciated, and they’re away too much and you’re having to shoulder some of the burdens of a family. … I just want to say thank you,” he continued.

He concluded by saying that taking selfies with everyone may take too long.

“And finally … I am going to swing down the ropeline. I want to shake as many hands as I can. I will tell you in advance that selfies are a little tough just because if I’m doing 2,000 selfies then we won’t be done until 10 in the evening,” he said.

But, he added, “I will make exceptions for little people … I mean young, I don’t mean short.”

Most picnic attendees were Democrats, and their numbers were boosted by a bevy of administration officials, according to media reports.

The included Secretary of State John Kerry, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, plus Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough.

GOP attendees included Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, Sen. Mike Johanns of Nebraska, and Sen. John Hoeven of North Dakota.

The highest ranking GOP politician at the event was Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. House Speaker John Boehner did not drop by.

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