As Obama boasts about bin Laden, critics pounce By New York Times News Service
Published: April 28. 2012 4:00AM PST
WASHINGTON — Presidents running for re-election typically boast of programs they created, people they helped or laws they signed. They talk about rising test scores or falling deficits or expanding job rolls. President Barack Obama is increasingly taking the unusual route of bragging about how he killed a man.
To be sure, that man was Osama bin Laden, and he is not mourned among either the president’s supporters or detractors. But in the days leading up to the first anniversary of the raid that finally caught up to the al-Qaida mastermind, Obama has made a concerted — some say indecorous — effort to trumpet the killing as perhaps the central accomplishment of his presidency.
The president has used the rarefied setting of the Situation Room to give an interview about how he made the decision to send in special operations forces. Vice President Joe Biden gave a speech saying the re-election slogan would be “Bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive.” His re-election campaign released a Web video showing former President Bill Clinton praising Obama’s fortitude, as it questioned whether Mitt Romney would have made the same decision.
Other presidents have boasted of their toughness, notably Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, who campaigned for re-election in 2004 on a record of having deposed Saddam Hussein in Iraq. But few presidents have talked about the killing of an individual enemy in such an expansive way.
No doubt, the raid on a house in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a year ago Tuesday is a more favorable story for the president politically than the latest report showing slowing economic growth. With the general election effectively under way, it is part of an effort by both sides to define Obama’s presidency.
Heading into a weekend in which Obama will appear with the comedian Jimmy Kimmel before a star-studded crowd at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, Romney and his allies once again tried to turn Obama’s own celebrity against him.
A Web video released this week by American Crossroads, a Republican super PAC, made the case that the president’s focus on image had preoccupied him from more important issues, mocking his mingling with the stars, including his “slow-jamming the news” with Jimmy Fallon on “Late Night” this week.
“Four years ago, America elected the biggest celebrity in the world, and Americans got one cool president,” the video says amid grim images and statistics on out-of-work recent college graduates. “But after four years of a celebrity president, is your life any better?” |
