Opinion: Brazen Obama sells White House Super Bowl cheers for political support
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Where’s Dennis ‘I Want to Impeach Somebody’ Kucinich when you need him?
President Obama, who ran as the Great Change Agent so very free of lobbyist and special interest influences, has just blatantly admitted to the world that he has sold the White House Super Bowl allegiance as a quid pro quo for the political support of an NFL team owner, some old white guy from a dying city who’s up for an ambassadorship somewhere.
In a brief Oval Office exchange today as the president was trying to talk about all this boring Wall Street economic stuff, a pool reporter plunged to the real story of the week and asked him, ‘The Steelers or Cardinals, sir?’
Here is what the 44th president said. He can’t run from it and say his words were taken out of context a la Blagojevich. It’s right there in the transcript:
‘I have to say, you know, I wish the Cardinals the best. Kurt Warner is a great story and he’s closer to my age than anybody else on the field, but I am a long-time Steelers fan. Mr. Rooney, the owner, was just an extraordinary supporter during the course of the campaign. Franco Harris was campaigning for me in Pittsburgh. So --
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Coach signed up with you, too.
THE PRESIDENT: Right, Coach Tomlin was a supporter. So I -- you know, I wish the best to the Cardinals. They’ve been long-suffering; it’s a great Cinderella story. But other than the Bears, the Steelers are probably the team that’s closest to my heart.’
OK, Obama already won Pennsylvania on Nov. 4. By endorsing the Steelers today, he’ll lose Ohio next time for certain. Now, by dissing the Phoenix Cardinals, there goes the Sunbelt. And the vote of anyone who visits there. Middle-agers for Warner are gone to Obama now too.
But what about Chicago, Obama’s latest hometown? The Cardinals originally played there. (Also, Racine and St. Louis, but that’s not the point.) In fact, the Cardinals were THE team of Chicago’s South Side, where Obama still lives and says he cheers for the White Sox. And the Cards often played the dread and detested Bears at Wrigley Field on the North Side.
That’s how the Cards won their last NFL Championship -- in 1947, which is before Obama was even born and uttered his first words: ‘moving forward.’
Yet, gee, whose hat does Obama wear? No wonder not one Republican House member trusted him with their bipartisan economic stimulus vote.
Obama was once described as the longshot candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. Let’s see, pittsberg steelers, who won the Super Bowl just the other day as a farewell gift for Jerome Bettis, or the Phoenix Cardinals, who haven’t even been to the playoffs since the 1980s.
Big political gaffe today.
Speaking of gaffes, Vice President Biden of nearby Delaware is cheering for the Baltimore Ravens in the Super Bowl.*
--Andrew Malcolm
* Not really. We made that up out of bitterness for the Ravens abandoning Cleveland, which won the NFL Championship in 1964 by upsetting -- oh, look! -- Baltimore.
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