Obama: Bad Day in London? Too Busy to Notice!

Does this look like a man having a bad day?

[AP Photo by Alistair Grant, outside 10 Downing Street, London, 2009.04.01]

I was about to chide the peripatetic Professor Blanchard for his overly wishful poo-poo headline, "Obama's No Good Very Bad Day in London." A fair reading of the article finds the professor's grapes a little less sour than the headline suggests. Alongside phraseological gems like "noxious numbskullery" and "economic krapola" (with a k? is that the Marxist spelling?), Dr. Blanchard bemoans the supposed shakedown world leaders are giving our President as they demand confessions of blame and global financial regulations. Dr. Blanchard disappoints his conservative readership by assigning no blame to Obama for this rough reception, saying "Presidents McCain, or Clinton, or Huckabee or Kucinich would have been in the same situation."

But was the American President's day in London really so "No Good Very Bad"? A reading of the NYTimes article Dr. Blanchard links seems to say President Sarkozy and Chancellor Merkel aren't being so hard on Obama as on America's "poorly regulated free-market capitalism" that helped cause this mess. That's not a bad day for Obama; that's just a pretty accurate diagnosis of the problem.

And somehow, I don't think President Obama felt himself to be having a really bad day. He was just too busy. In one day, he...

1. announced new arms talks with the Russia,
   
2. scheduled a July summit in Russia with President Medvedev,
3. discussed arms, human rights, and those nutty North Koreans with Chinese President Hu,
4. held a lengthy discussion and a news conference with UK PM Brown,
5. had tea with the Queen and gave her an iPod,

...and still was smiling and holding hands with his wife throughout the day. We should all love our jobs as much as our President seems to relish his.