Yesterday, President Obama delivered a bizarre statement to the press at the White House. Flanked by ordinary Americans – whom he uses as a backdrop to his highly-partisan politics on a regular basis nowadays – Obama dropped this doozy: “I’m going to be president for the next four years. I hope.”
The media immediately went into paroxysms of anxiety. Elspeth Reeve of The Atlantic hand-wrung: “it was, to be sure, a strange moment. Could he actually have been joking about assassination? …. Maybe Obama just let all those comparisons to Lincoln get to him.”
The media can calm down. It was a weak joke laced with arrogance – Obama’s staple these days. But look for the media to continue to paint Obama as a victim of an enraged right wing as his second term commences. After all, they’re not going to report the President using Americans as props and abusing his bully pulpit.