RUSH: Folks, now we know why Obama felt obligated to speak about the Ukraine situation today, yet again. There was a story in the New York Times a couple of days ago, which would have been Saturday. “Sticking to His Travel Plans, at Risk of Looking Bad.” As I say, it’s in the New York Times. “As smoke billowed from the downed Malaysian jetliner in the fields of eastern Ukraine on Thursday, President Obama pressed ahead with his schedule:
“A cheeseburger with fries at the Charcoal Pit in Delaware, a speech about infrastructure and two splashy fund-raisers in New York City. The potential for jarring split-screen imagery was clear. Reports of charred bodies and a ground-to-air missile attack from Eastern Europe dominated television screens while photographers snapped pictures of a grinning Mr. Obama holding a toddler at the restaurant.
“The presidential motorcade was later filmed pulling up to Trump Place Apartments, the Riverside Avenue venue for his first fund-raiser. And yet, White House aides said no consideration was given to abandoning the president’s long-planned schedule, even during the hour-long flight from Delaware to New York, when word suddenly arrived that Israel had begun a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip …
“‘It is rarely a good idea to return to the White House just for show, when the situation can be handled responsibly from the road,’ said Jennifer Palmieri, the White House communications director. ‘Abrupt changes to his schedule can have the unintended consequence of unduly alarming the American people or creating a false sense of crisis.'”
Yeah, who would want to do that? So we’re gonna stick to the schedule — a cheeseburger, fries and two fundraisers after the Israelis invade the Gaza Strip and the smoke still billows from the downed wreckage of the Malaysian jet — because to go back to the White House would scare the American people. (Gasp!) To go back to the White House and deal with it would frighten the American people.
It might create “a false sense of crisis,” and there’s clearly no crisis.
Do you see a crisis? Obama is having a cheeseburger and fries! Crisis? What crisis? He doesn’t see a crisis. Two fundraisers? Crisis, what crisis? So why do we want to create the idea that there’s a crisis here? There’s nothing out of the norm. Now, if it were Bush who had the nerve to go to his ranch after Katrina, which probably remains the biggest crime of the Twenty-First Century so far, then of course the New York Times’ coverage would be different.
But at least I think now even the New York Times here starting to complain that Obama’s constant vacationing is making him look bad. Right there in the headline: “Sticking to His Travel Plans, At Risk of Looking Bad.” See, you and I ignore the New York Times, but they don’t. It is their bible. So if you jet off to two Democrat fundraisers in Manhattan — well, in New York City — after just hearing from Putin himself about the Malaysian jetliner being shot down?
Later in the piece, the Times covers their bases: Bush and Reagan did the same thing, or worse. But nevertheless they’re worried. All of the leftists, all the Democrats, they are profoundly worried over the sum total of all of this. Since they live and die by the photo-op — they live and die by image, PR, buzz — they are especially worried about how it all looks to people.