{"id":8920,"date":"2011-03-15T13:45:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-15T17:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=8920"},"modified":"2011-03-15T13:45:00","modified_gmt":"2011-03-15T17:45:00","slug":"overexposed-obama-undercutting-seriousness-of-the-presidency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/8920\/overexposed-obama-undercutting-seriousness-of-the-presidency\/","title":{"rendered":"Overexposed Obama Undercutting Seriousness of the Presidency"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>No one begrudges a man his pastimes, but veteran White House reporter <a href=\"http:\/\/www.whitehousedossier.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Keith Koffler wonders<\/a> whether President Barack Obama might be better off canceling his upcoming ESPN appearance and focusing \u2013 at least in public \u2013 on any number of world crises.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>This morning, as Japan\u2019s nuclear crisis enters a potentially catastrophic phase, we are told that\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/playbook\/\">Obama is videotaping his NCAA tournament picks<\/a> and that we\u2019ll be able to tune into ESPN Wednesday to find out who he likes.<\/p>\n<p>Saturday, he made <a href=\"http:\/\/www.whitehousedossier.com\/2011\/03\/12\/chilly-obama-golf\/\">his 61st outing to the golf course<\/a> as president, and got back to the White House with just enough time for a quick shower before heading out to party with Washington\u2019s elite journalists at the<a href=\"http:\/\/www.whitehousedossier.com\/2011\/03\/13\/obama-cracks-gridiron-dinner\/\"> annual Gridiron Dinner<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>With various urgencies swirling about him, Saturday\u2019s weekly videotaped presidential address focusing on \u201cWomen\u2019s History Month\u201d seemed bizarrely out of touch.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Koffler also notes the growing concern among members of Congress that Obama is AWOL in the deficit reduction debate, seemingly content to let the legislative branch decide whether to shut down the government if negotiations fail on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>Forget debating whether this president is able to make the right decision when he gets a <a href=\"http:\/\/voices.washingtonpost.com\/thefix\/eye-on-2008\/hrcs-new-ad.html\" target=\"_blank\">3am phone call<\/a>.\u00a0 So far, it looks like he can\u2019t maintain focus during his regular workday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No one begrudges a man his pastimes, but veteran White House reporter Keith Koffler wonders whether President Barack Obama might be better off canceling his upcoming ESPN appearance and focusing \u2013 at least in public \u2013 on any number of world crises. This morning, as Japan\u2019s nuclear crisis enters a potentially catastrophic phase, we are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[143,84,59,2487,2489,2440,1300,2488,2490],"class_list":["post-8920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-barack-obama","tag-congress","tag-deficit","tag-disciplinie","tag-focus","tag-government-shutdown","tag-japan","tag-stamina","tag-time-management"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8920"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8924,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8920\/revisions\/8924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}