In the wake of the terrorist attacks in Brussels, Belgium, President Obama has taken a lot of heat over “optics,” first for not dropping everything and zipping home like Ricochet Rabbit, then for going to a baseball game, and most recently, for dancing the tango at a state dinner in Argentina. As a red-blooded American, it is very difficult for me to understand how anyone could be mad, under any circumstances, at this:
Okay, the President did keep trying to dip her in the wrong direction, but other than that, it was a smooth, suave performance that people like the Morning Joe crew are probably more than a little bit jealous of. They predictably slammed President Obama for the move, while over at CNN, Hillary Rosen was actually asked if Hillary Clinton should come out and denounce the President’s dance moves, and while she declined that offer, she did kinda concede the point:
Jon Berman: Do you think Hillary Clinton ought to come out and make a statement about whether or not she thinks the President should have cut his trip short, or should be dancing the tango in the midst of the terror attacks?Hillary Rosen: I will give the President a little leeway, from all the pool reports he was sort of a little forced into this by his Argentinian host –Berman: Do you think that’s a bad picture, though, if you are saying he was forced into it?Rosen:
Yeah, I don’t think it’s a great picture, but I also don’t think a president can afford to just turn over everything that is happening and run home to a place that is not really the site of the terror attacks.
Surprisingly, the folks at Fox and Friends took it pretty easy on the President, and Ainsley Earhardt even sort of defended him:
This doesn’t happen often, but I’m closer to agreeing with Fox and Friends than with any of the others, but I don’t think President Obama needs the excuse that he was “forced into it,” although we should all be so lucky as to have our arms twisted that way, and I’d like to think his reluctance was more for First Lady Michelle Obama‘s benefit than any timidity about “optics.”
On Wednesday, I wrote a piece comparing the President’s actions with those of late President Ronald Reagan, but it wasn’t intended to make Reagan look bad. Although it was written in a satirical voice critical of Reagan, the real point was that optics stories are garbage, self-evidently so. When a reporter reports on “optics,” they are literally telling you that what you’re hearing makes no substantive difference. Unfortunately for Reagan, he was one of the first presidents to have to worry about optics, and he had as healthy a
In President Obama’s case, however, I think he’s engaging in exactly the right kind of optics, although I would prefer to call it symbolism. When backed up with substance, symbolism can be powerful, and Obama’s recent actions can be summed up by paraphrasing Robert Duvall‘s character in Apocalypse Now: ISIS don’t tango!
President Obama, and our next president, too, will make sure that ISIS gets theirs, but in the meantime, is there a better middle finger to these joyless assholes than tripping the tango with a sexy, tastefully-uncovered woman, or going to that most American of pastimes, a baseball game? Hollering and threatening to lock down Muslim neighborhoods and build a wall and keep out all the Muslims is exactly what they want. We should all be doing the tango today.