Exhibit H Supporting the Thesis That Obama’s Celebrity Status Has Acheived Unprecedented Importance to His Standing as President
I mean, come on:
He even topped that by making sure to carve out time for a lovely date night in Paris. PARIS! Dining on foie gras and pheasant de truffled snootypants beneath the Eiffel Tower? Now that’s a European adventure and makes me a little pouty when I consider that, like most American women, the closest I’ve come to that lately was the “Tour of Italy” trio of I-talian favorites at The Olive Garden.
Even on the night of a big NBA playoff game, Barack made sure date night would go on. He arranged for an early dinner allowing plenty of time for digestion before tipoff. He and Michelle had supper at ritzy Citronelle in Georgetown, cooing and hand-holding and everything.
The thing with the fawning over run-of-the-mill celebrities is that it’s the fawning that gives them influence. Blending that influence with the actual power native to the presidency of the United States of America makes for a dangerous cocktail.
Devoted fans will typically not be adequate judges of their heroes’ work product, and it is just plain dangerous to give political leaders too much of that beneficent haze.
We did this with Reagan, too. We just didn’t have the Net then.
We didn’t hear about this in the previous administration because Laura Bush probably had a better time reading a book.