In Defense of the President

Many of you have probably already seen the Politico snippit (as linked on the Drudge Report) on how President Obama did not watch the returns for the special elections last night and instead watched an HBO documentary about George W. Bush.

Ha ha, just kidding. He was actually watching an HBO documentary about himself...

While I find the latter entirely possible, the former (him not being informed of the results)... not so much.

I am the first to profess that we have a 12 year old in office that doesn't have a clue which way is up. But I find it really hard to believe that the President of the United States, who considers his word extremely influential (so influential that he did, in fact, go to the three states where the major races were and campaigned multiple times-as did VP Joe) was not following the coverage of the elections.

Okay, so he wasn't watching it on t.v. But how could he?

I got home last night about 10:00 p.m. CST. Fox News was covering these elections like it was November (well, I guess it is November, but you know what I mean). They had constant coverage, analysis of polls, all of their graphics and the overall feel of the broadcast gave it that election night sparkle (can you tell I love politics?). My family flipped to CNN, CNN Headline, CBS, ABC, NBC, and MSNBC multiple times and guess how much election coverage they had?

None.

Not so much as a lower third giving updates. They were completely ignoring that the elections even existed. Granted, this was only a few minute inquiry on each channel, but from what I saw, it was nothing. (If you saw election coverage on the other stations, please insert your experience in the comments. I would love to read your analysis.)

So, the only way President Obama could have watched continuous coverage of the elections was by watching Fox News... Since hell hasn't frozen over I'm pretty sure that didn't happen.

I mentioned to a friend last night the results of my t.v. research and he had no idea what was going on. He told me that he was following the elections online at BigGovernment.com. Couldn't the President have followed the election results online as well? (I'm kicking myself right now for not taking screen shots of all the major news sites to see if this was even possible)

I understand the irony of the President watching a documentary about himself while he endures yet another flame out (see the Olympic results) of his efforts to influence voters... But, I'm sure he was updated.

Don't make too much hype about this, guys. As hilariously ironic as the situation might be, I find it hard to believe that President Obama was in the dark about what was going on last night. We can't focus on this too much because it will only make us look naive. Although that may be the example that the President has set for us time and time again, we should rise above it.