If the Presidency of Richard Nixon taught us anything it is that the most powerful man in the world should be very careful what he says into a microphone.
With the growing fallout from his crack on “The Tonight Show” about the Special Olympics, Barack Obama, like Nixon, like Ronald Reagan, like Bill Clinton, and like Dick Cheney before him, needs to remember the difference between inside thoughts and outside thoughts.
Perhaps it's a learning curve or perhaps we're seeing a bit of the real man behind the mask, but the President also needs to learn that in his position, there really is no difference anymore.
The Watergate scandal ended Nixon's Presidency but in many ways it didn’t define it. Even for those who admire Nixon's diplomatic achievements, his historic outreach to China being far from the least of them, the prejudices and pottymouth of the man will always leave a foul personal taste.
Enemies Lists, wiretapping and the other crimes of his administration seem personally less offensive, even thought they were constitutionally far more threatening, than the 37th President's numerous off-color and off-the-cuff remarks about African-Americans, Jews, his enemies, foreign leaders and even some of his cabinet and supposed close political friends. They show a President who, for all his mastery of geopolitics, was consumed with bile and rage.
Even in the modern age, where a President’s every move is documented and tagged and the smallest gesture can have huge consequence. Ronald Reagan, a genial President if ever there was one, had his dark moments, too.
In 1988, watching his Vice-President George H. W. Bush struggling in the polls, the lame duck President reverse engineered a scathing comment similar to Obama’s Special Olympics remark. Asked by a reporter about rumors of the then Democratic Presidential nominee Michael Dukakis' mental health, the deft and sometimes conveniently deaf President, replied "I'm not going to pick on a cripple" without missing a beat.
Watching Barack Obama last night on Leno, it was obvious that the President, like Ronald Reagan back at that late ‘80s press conference, was feeling in his element. He made his points about the economy and his approach to deal with it. He appeared humbled enough to almost make you forget he has a card in his pocket with codes to unleash Armageddon.
It was a bravo partisan performance, until he started talking about his bowling and how his score was "like the Special Olympics or something."
That was where it all went wrong. Missed at first by most pundits and journalists, who were busy praising Obama's performance, that comment at the expense of the mental challenged has come to dominate the President's entire California trip and what he thought would be a triumphant return to D.C. The President's men were on it much faster, they had Obama calling Special Olympics chairman Tim Shriver from Air Force One to apologize even before the pre-taped Tonight Show was broadcast.
"He expressed his disappointment and he apologized in a way that was very moving," Shriver told ABC's “Good Morning America” Friday.
