Look, I didn't just fall off the turnip truck yesterday. I know politics often involves more optics than substance. Hell, I sometimes demand better optics from the political class myself. But I'm really irritated by this false meme that Obama is pretending to take charge of the response to Irene.
No. He's not just "learning the lesson of Katrina" and making sure it appears he's engaged and in charge. He's actually taking charge of the response, because it's his job and he's been fully engaged in doing that job from day one. He's not the one who asks for the Cliff Notes version for the briefings. That was the last guy and any superficial analogies between the two are wildly invalid. Not that it has stopped the media from plying this lazy narrative.
And of course, the usual GOPologists are working overtime to promote that bogus meme. But everybody knows they have an agenda. They don't pretend to be neutral observers.
There's lots of valid reasons to question and criticize Obama's decisions. But it's simply wrong to imply that he makes them without having become as fully informed as humanly possible.
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