Faux Pas
Obama was disappointingly tone deaf in running off to Chicago for the holiday weekend and passing up the traditional Arlington Cemetery rite. The result has his opponents laughing, and the narrative of a president who "doesn't get it" gains strength.
I believe the anti-Obama hysteria is 95% unjustified (granted, 5% of the hysteria may be justified), but Obama doesn't make things easy on himself. I sometimes wonder if he even wants to connect with the sorts of ordinary Americans who express differences with him and his policies.
The cabal on the corporatist Right, have little interest in anything but forcing President Obama to dance at the end of their strings. They are even using the Cheney/Bush allowed and caused blowout (by their letting the oil industry write all the rules) in the Gulf, in an attempt to pillory him, going so far as to draw it deliberately out in an effort to make him seem less in charge. Had this disaster occurred during the Cheney/Bush regime, we would have had them skinned and hung out to dry over what they caused. Now they are trying to drag their culpability over those whom were handed the convoluted mess they left us with in 2009.
David, I do think that Obama is mired in so much gleeful schadenfreude from antagonists and lazy media, who look for chance to say he's weak. Perhaps he should just nationalize Big Oil and say, "How's them apples...?"