Commander in Tweet
Just what we need, another "explanation" from @BarackObama!
By JAMES TARANTO
We have to admit, we didn't watch President Obama's "Twitter town hall" yesterday. In fact, we were unclear on the whole concept. We assumed that the whole thing was happening on Twitter--that the president would be tweeting answers to tweeted questions. And to be honest, we can think of better things to do on Twitter, like replacing a word in a famous quote with "duck."
In short, it was little more than a glorified press conference--replete, as CBS reports, with the usual Obama tropes:
A CBS News video set us straight. Apparently it was sort of an interview format, with a guy in a gray suit (Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, according to CNN) reading questions off a TV screen, and Obama speaking, not tweeting, in response. The questions were screened by a team of eightTwitter-selected "curators"--all journalists, coincidentally enough--which ensured that none of IowaHawk's questions would get through to the president. Too bad. We'd have liked to hear the answer to this one: "An $8 billion high speed train leaves Chicago for Iowa City at 8:15am at 40mph. Why?"
The magnitude of the worst U.S. recession since the Great Depression escaped President Obama when he first stepped into office, the president acknowledged today at his "Twitter town hall."
Asked what mistakes he made in handling the recession, Mr. Obama said today he could have done a better job at explaining "to the American people it was going to take a while to get out of this."
Except of course that he did explain: that there was a danger unemployment would rise as high as 8% unless Congress spent some $800 kajillion on a so-called stimulus. Congress obliged. Unemployment reached as high as 10% and is still above 9%.
That's why the World's Greatest Orator keeps claiming that the quality of his explaining was insufficient. It diverts attention from the real problem: that his explanation was wrong because his policy was bad.
Nonetheless, there's always room for improvement, and if Obama wants to learn to explain things better, he could do worse than to stop talking and start tweeting. Twitter's 140-character delimitation, though sporadically vexatious, is an inexorable disincentive to magniloquence. And let's face it, Obama can be a bit pompous.
This seems as good a time as any to mention that you can now follow this columnist on Twitter. Sorry for the self-promotion, but as Hillel the Elder observed, "If I am not for my duck, who will be for me?
Just what we need, another "explanation" from @BarackObama!
By JAMES TARANTO
We have to admit, we didn't watch President Obama's "Twitter town hall" yesterday. In fact, we were unclear on the whole concept. We assumed that the whole thing was happening on Twitter--that the president would be tweeting answers to tweeted questions. And to be honest, we can think of better things to do on Twitter, like replacing a word in a famous quote with "duck."
In short, it was little more than a glorified press conference--replete, as CBS reports, with the usual Obama tropes:
A CBS News video set us straight. Apparently it was sort of an interview format, with a guy in a gray suit (Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, according to CNN) reading questions off a TV screen, and Obama speaking, not tweeting, in response. The questions were screened by a team of eightTwitter-selected "curators"--all journalists, coincidentally enough--which ensured that none of IowaHawk's questions would get through to the president. Too bad. We'd have liked to hear the answer to this one: "An $8 billion high speed train leaves Chicago for Iowa City at 8:15am at 40mph. Why?"
The magnitude of the worst U.S. recession since the Great Depression escaped President Obama when he first stepped into office, the president acknowledged today at his "Twitter town hall."
Asked what mistakes he made in handling the recession, Mr. Obama said today he could have done a better job at explaining "to the American people it was going to take a while to get out of this."
Except of course that he did explain: that there was a danger unemployment would rise as high as 8% unless Congress spent some $800 kajillion on a so-called stimulus. Congress obliged. Unemployment reached as high as 10% and is still above 9%.
That's why the World's Greatest Orator keeps claiming that the quality of his explaining was insufficient. It diverts attention from the real problem: that his explanation was wrong because his policy was bad.
Nonetheless, there's always room for improvement, and if Obama wants to learn to explain things better, he could do worse than to stop talking and start tweeting. Twitter's 140-character delimitation, though sporadically vexatious, is an inexorable disincentive to magniloquence. And let's face it, Obama can be a bit pompous.
This seems as good a time as any to mention that you can now follow this columnist on Twitter. Sorry for the self-promotion, but as Hillel the Elder observed, "If I am not for my duck, who will be for me?
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