As Red State’s Erick Erickson writes, “Remember back during the 2008 campaign Hillary Clinton ran that ad asking who you’d want to be in the White House when the ‘3 a.m. phone call’ came? 3 hours after midnight Eastern time this past Saturday, that 3 a.m. phone call came:”
The President of Poland, his wife, major government and military leaders, and others all died in a horrible plane crash in Russia.
In Europe, the rumor is rampant, without any evidence, that Vladimir Putin was behind it. The confirmed story is that the Russian military repeatedly tried to persuade the Polish pilot to divert his craft due to zero visibility. The pilot, given the ceremony the Polish delegation was headed to, which commemorated the slaughter of thousands of Poles by the Soviets in World War II, refused. The plane hit trees on landing and all died.
CNN has updated their story repeated. When I looked at it at 9:46 a.m. ET on Saturday morning, something very odd stood out.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had released a statement.
French President NIcholas Sarkozy had released a statement.
An American Undersecretary of State for Public Affairs had released a statement.
Sometime after that the White House released its statement. The White House blog had nothing at all until 12:48 p.m. ET.
This shouldn’t be a partisan point. I am genuinely curious. Why the delay? Did the President sleep through the 3 a.m. phone call? If you think it is unfair to ask, just imagine if it were George W. Bush.
This morning, Dan Rhiel noted that the Orwellian anti-Hillary Clinton “1984” viral video produced by an Obama campaign consultant looks really Orwellian in light of what we’ve seen. Obama’s slow response on the death of Lech Kaczynski in Russia helps to answer Hillary’s big viral video from the 2008 campaign.
Of course, it’s no secret who I wanted to see answering the phone at 3:00 am back then:
[youtube 8-T62dmTZ8E]
He wasn’t perfect, but compared to the performances we’ve seen in the year since by both Hillary as Secretary of State, and Obama as Chief of State, he’s looking increasing better, at least at this part of the job.
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