(Campaign) Promises, (Campaign) Promises

posted at 9:46 am on October 29, 2009 by Howard Portnoy
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Barack Obama is angry that he is taking heat for keeping a campaign promise. No, no — it’s not the promise to be transparent. He’s broken that promise into so many pieces that the repair shop called and said he’s better off buying a new transparency. And it’s not the promise to change the tone of politics in Washington: his airing of the pettiest of grievances toward imagined offenders has the country more bitterly divided than ever.

It’s a “campaign” promise he made to his lovely wife, Michelle. He promised the one who wears the broad shoulders in the family that he would take her to New York after the election “for one of their ‘date nights’ — dinner and a Broadway play.”

You know, just when you thought the big lug couldn’t get any more lovable. . .! Think about it. Gives the country the middle finger when it comes to Afghanistan, turns his back on an ailing economy to attempt to radicalize the health care industry, and fills his administration with people who believe America’s biggest sin is that it hasn’t bent over backward far enough to be more like Europe, and his chief priority is keeping his promise to take the missus out for a big night? I thought her big night was hip hop night at the White House. (By the way, rumors are flying that the president has banned hip hop from the White House. Say it ain’t so. What will Congresswoman Barbara Lee and the rest of the Hip Hop Caucus Institute think?)

But I digress. Obama told The New York Times Magazine for an article appearing in the Nov. 1 issue that he was pee-ohed at conservative commentators and Republican officials for making his date into a political issue. “If I weren’t president,” he said, “I would be happy to catch the shuttle with my wife to take her to a Broadway show, as I had promised her during the campaign, and there would be no fuss and no muss and no photographers. That would please me greatly.” His not being president would please me greatly, too.

Unfortunately for the world’s most dedicated husband, presidents are restricted to traveling by secure government aircraft and vehicles. That means that an evening out on the town for the first couple costs the American taxpayers a pretty penny. Naturally, the penny wouldn’t have been nearly as pretty if they elected to, say, eat in Washington (I hear the city has one or two restaurants that isn’t a McDonald’s) and go the Kennedy Center afterwards, but — hey! — a promise is a promise. And what the hell business is it of ours anyway? Oh, that’s right.

Cross-posted at Zombie Contentions

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