Heart-ache: White House cancels kids’ tour to host Steelers

So that guy holding up the Steeler jersey is a body double. Got it.

BobMbx on May 22, 2009 at 1:27 PM

No… That was obviously Obama. Meeting with the winners of the winners of various NCAA and professional sports championships is a ceremonial thing that the President does as Head of State. Along with various other selected winners and groups of people… However, he doesn’t meet with every tour group at the White House. I’ve been on a tour of the White House (when it was still open to the public) and can tell you that you just get shuffled through the State Rooms by a tour guide. Although it is only open to school groups now, that’s still quite a few school groups to meet with the President. I’d hope that he’d have better things to do.

The issue with this school group had nothing to do with the President’s schedule or meeting the President in person. They probably had some of the rooms closed off to set up for the event in the East Room. The tours are likely scheduled around different events in the White House, and there was some miscommunication between when the students had to arrive (9:30 vs 10:30). The whole thing was poorly handled by whichever junior staffer said no, but it cannot be pinned on Obama himself. (Except for his inability to hire competent people).

Illinidiva on May 22, 2009 at 1:44 PM

It’s not really his fault. A twenty something staffer (or perhaps even an intern) is likely in charge of figuring out what times are available for the tours and coordinating with the school. It seems like someone in the White House gave them the wrong time or the school misheard. The issue is that it was poorly handled by the White House. It seems that whichever junior staffer shooed them away was a little snot and didn’t defuse the situation properly. The White House could have easily kept this from blowing up with a profound apology about the mix-up, some White House souveneirs for the kids, and a rescheduled date.

Again, the person who is directly to blame for this incident is a junior staffer who doesn’t work directly with the President and probably has only met him on a few occasions. So you cannot fault Obama directly for this, but you can fault him for the overall competence of his staff, which seems to be pretty low.

Illinidiva on May 22, 2009 at 2:05 PM

You got that right, meeting with SUPER STARS, watching basket ball games and finding time to attend his own kids sporting events, doesn’t leave anytime for all the work he is doing, let alone interfering with the preperations for the big event. He is too busy, as he said, “reading reports and writing stuff” during his “office Hours”. Reading reports sounds like something he is suppose to do, and probably does to see what “he” is doing, but writing stuff? Who discribes their job as “writing stuff”. It is just an excuse of his lack of having anything to point to that he has actaully worked on. Imagine telling your boss when he asked what you are doing every day and you tell him you are reading reports and writing stuff. But then you were defending your champion so you missed the point being that the children who were ten minutes late, even arriving before the white house said they shut the gate, were told they were not going to be allowed to take a tour. Nothing was said about a president that was too excited about meeting sports stars, meeting with the kids. They were there to tour the white house. Next question is just how long was that tour suppose to last? Looks like to me it was scheduled to be a quick walk thru and don’t let the gate his you in the backside. In my opinin this was probably a last minute change of plans to accomondate Obama’s ego and even if the kids had arrived on time they would have been told that the tour had been rescheduled for 9:30; sorry if they missed the memo, but they were too late to have the tour.

Franklyn on May 22, 2009 at 2:26 PM

Good God! I hate Obama; I’m not defending him at all but I also think that you should have a good reason to hate him. His tax and spend policies, demonization of his opponents, and unwillingness to take responsibility for his actions are more important to me than a scheduling snafu.

And I’m also a bit disturbed that a bunch of politically savvy adults seriously believe that the President actually meets with tour groups. That’s something that I’d suspect that the five year olds on the tour might think was going to happen. (And the teacher would have likely had to explain to them that this is not the case). A White House tour is a very controlled guided tour of the public rooms of the White House. It seems like the issue that interfered with setting up chairs, etc. in the East Room for the Steelers event.

This definitely could have been handled better by the junior White House staff, but Obama wasn’t aware of the group. Let’s not become Kos Kids here.

Illinidiva on May 22, 2009 at 3:14 PM

With all due respect, the issue isn’t that the group was late, or whether Obama was late, or on time, or anything like that. Once the problem arose, Bambi should have fixed it by strolling over to the kids for a few minutes, say hello, tell them how cute they were, and tell them he has to go inside now to answer the phone and would they like some lemonade and cookies.

The problem is Obama is an as*hole, and that causes other completely unnecessary problems to arise.

fwiw, my kids wouldn’t have been allowed to go on that particular school trip, so it serves the stupid parents right anyhow.

JiangxiDad on May 22, 2009 at 2:39 PM

Again, Obama wouldn’t have been aware of the kids so he wouldn’t have done anything. Could the junior staffer who turned them away handled the situation in a more professional manner? Most definitely. Does it reflect poorly on Emanuel and by extension Obama that the junior staffers are self involved snots? Yes it does.

Illinidiva on May 22, 2009 at 3:18 PM