DC Report: Fewer Obama t-shirts and a Golden Oldie

When I last visited our nation’s capital, it resembled a trip to Lourdes, with the Obama memorabilia replacing souvenirs of you-know-who. How fast things changes. Only a few short months later, you can still purchase an Obama t-shirt or mug with ease, but it’s not in your face with a makeshift stand erected every twenty feet or so. Or maybe it’s just my imagination. Maybe a lot of it’s still there and I’ve become inured to it. Typing on the Acela from Washington to NY, this trip to DC already seems a blur, having spent most of it either in the house office buildings or the PJTV studio on M Street from which we broadcast last night’s healthcare forum with Reps. Eric Cantor and David Price, among others.

One thing we’re wrestling with at PJTV is how to strike a balance between CSPAN wonkiness and some measure of show biz. Sometimes you get it right as in Steven Crowder’s investigation of CanadaCare, which manages to be both funny and informative. Steve’s video has attracted a fair amount of MSM attraction and garnered Crowder appearances on Hannity and Beck. [I thought you were opposed to mainstream media.-ed. Well, I am, but I am also a hypocrite in case you haven’t noticed. You mean like Nancy Pelosi? Are you accusing of Botox injections? Low blow. Well, you have been appearing on PJTV a lot lately.]

But back to Obama. It’s interesting to see how much he has aged in the short time he has been in office. He looks haggard. This is a man who has lived a remarkably charmed life in some ways, especially in the professional sphere, rising with amazing rapidity, so fast that whatever defeats he has suffered were but glancing blows. It’s hard to think of anyone quite like that in the political world. Even JFK, born with the “silverest” of spoons, went to war. So Obama may be ill-prepared when things don’t work. And right now they’re not. I know some commenters on here have suggested he may be on the way to a nervous breakdown. I wouldn’t go that far. Furthermore, nervous breakdown is a term of art, really, not of science. We may have all had one, or something similar, from time to time. Another way of looking at it, however, is the ability to deal with the stress in front of us, the stress that’s always there and sometimes turns into a big hairy monster that doesn’t let you sleep. How do you deal with that? Well, Barack Obama has his way and it reminds me of an old song. Remember this one from Joe Jones?

You talk too much
You worry me to death
You talk too much
You even worry my pet

You just talk
Talk too much

You talk about people
That you don’t know
You talk about people
Wherever you go

You just talk
Talk too much