"He grabs me by the arm, takes me aside,” [Jindal] said, “Here’s the strange thing … I thought he’d be angry about the oil spill, the lack of resources; I thought he’d get down there and say, look governor, we’re going to do everything we can to work together. Instead, he was upset he was going to look bad; he was worried about some routine letter we had already sent to his administration, nothing important.”It seems like the "stunt" — if that's what it is — works pretty well. It sounds like Obama knows how to look cool — photographed from a distance — even when he seems "thin-skinned" to the person he's talking to, and then that person — with less attention to how it looks — interacts with him and looks angry and disrespecful.
Jindal said the reaction shocked him. “I was amazed at two things: one, that he was mad about the wrong things, and two, that he was so thin-skinned.” In a time of crisis, Jindal said the last thing he wanted or expected was for the president to stage what was “clearly a media stunt.”
“I wanted him to be the president of the country, and instead he was playing political theatrics.”
Obviously, it was a media op, and a politician should be good at projecting the right image on those occasions. Of course, this TV appearance of Jindal's is also a media op, and Jindal is using this one well. I assume he also managed the theatrics of his tarmac encounter with Obama — since I don't remember seeing any pictures of that incident that were used against him, like the pictures of Brewer.
And that's not to say the pictures of Brewer hurt her. I don't think they did. I think the people who are going to like Brewer will like seeing her being feisty, standing up to the President. And she's got a book to sell them — "Scorpions for Breakfast" — and she got plenty of extra publicity for it. That last link goes to Amazon, where her book is #1 in the Government/Public Policy list.
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