I'll Take Dubya's "My Pet Goat" Over Obama's Vapid Viva, Las Vegas Any Day of the Week

When George W. Bush got the horrific news on 9/11, he was reading a book which, in retrospect, had the bathetic and risible title My Pet Goat. When Barack H. Obama heard the horrible news about events in Libya, he uttered a few lame and perfunctory remarks, whereupon he....jetted off to a fund-raiser in Vegas. Hugh Hewitt and Mark Steyn comment re the latter's M.O.:

HH: Now I’ve been talking with all the other journalists who are planning on interviewing you, and we have agreed that regardless of what the new edition of the book says, or what you want to talk about, or even what you answer, we want to know about your involvement with Harry in Vegas. 

MS: (laughing) I am proud to say, I can’t remember how long ago it is that I’ve been to, since I’ve been in Vegas, because I’m like an old Vegas guy. I really don’t like new Vegas that much. I’m like a kind of Caesar’s Palace era Vegas guy. But I must say, just speaking about Vegas, I thought that thing last night with the President saying he had a tough day, and comparing the dead Americans in Libya to campaign supporters, which he did, I thought was one of the most disgraceful, inept and embarrassing performances by a head of state or government that I have ever seen. Every American should be ashamed of their president this morning. 

HH: Well, you got where I was going with that. The President gets word that our ambassador is killed, three other Americans slaughtered in Libya, and he reacts by getting on a plane and going to Vegas to raise money. What would have happened to George W. Bush, Mark Steyn, if he had done that?

MS: Oh, I know, but you know what’s interesting? Sometimes, the schedule goes whacky. Everybody knows, everybody remembers the opening of the Michael Moore film, where he gleefully mocked President Bush getting the news of 9/11 while he’s in that grade school reading My Pet Goat to the 2^nd graders, or whatever they were.

HH: Yup.

MS: And Michael Moore and the left ran with that to the point where Osama bin Laden in one of those videotapes he released was doing My Pet Goat jokes straight out of Michael Moore’s film. In this instance, the President actually has time. He can say okay, well maybe the Vegas thing is booked, I don’t want to disappoint people, we’re going to go ahead with that. Everything then depends on the tone. He didn’t script his remarks. I mean, this is a man, for example, who doesn’t have, I think, great empathetic qualities at the best of times. But to slough it off in that bloodless language, when he says, and I believe this is a direct quote, obviously our hearts are broken today. If you say obviously before it, your heart is not broken. He said oh, it’s a tough day. It’s not a tough day. It’s a tough day for the families of the four people who were killed. Why can’t you, you’re spending $4 trillion dollars a year, and you’ve got these 12 year old speechwriters you’re so proud of, why couldn’t…and you’re the king of the prompter, why couldn’t you on Air Force One, you’re the only head of state in any major country who has a plane to fly him around his own country in a 40 car motorcade. Why you’re on the stupid plane, why can’t you actually take the trouble to learn some words that would mean something and are appropriate to the occasion.