What Gets The President Fired Up?
But at a campaign fund-raiser Thursday evening for Virginia gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds, Mr. Obama shed the cloak of bipartisanship and fired a verbal barrage at Republican critics and opponents of his economic policies. Without naming names, he portrayed them as hypocrites with selective memories.
"That bank crisis didn't happen on my watch," he declared, sounding fed up with criticism of his big-money programs to ease the recession and give the economy a boost.
"I don't want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to just get out of the way so we can clean up the mess!"
There was political fire in his rhetoric, and his speech pattern recalled the cadence of his most forceful campaign speeches last year.
It raised the question, as I did today with spokesman Robert Gibbs: of just what or who is getting under the president's skin so as to draw that hellfire verbiage?
"Mark, I think the president just gets fired up at these events," said Gibbs, slightly amused by the question. "You know...it's liberating to get outside of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, I guess."
How liberating could it be? President Obama was only 9 miles from the White House in McLean, Virginia.
"You'd be surprised at how liberating it can be to just get outside the complex," replied Gibbs.
Picking up on the president's rhetorical target, Gibbs said Mr. Obama "gets free advice every day from people that took the bus and rode it into the ditch." Again, no names. But there's no question Gibbs and the president are talking about Republicans on whose watch the financial markets nearly collapsed but who are now critical of the Administration's handling of the economy.
"I think the President gets fired up," said Gibbs for the second time.
Now you know.
