The political Quote of the Day comes from Tina Brown, noting how President Barack Obama’s reputation and image is taking a hit by how he is being perceived by some, while New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s image is better than ever:
Obama is the only person walking around with a big smile on his face. That onset of wild laughter on 60 Minutes about how humorous it is that no one in America, I mean no one, wants a bailout for the auto companies was one of the more surreal presidential performances lately. Why has Obama suddenly turned into the Paris Hilton of teachable moments? We realize he’s just trying to shore up his poll ratings so he can distance himself from Pelosi’s pitchfork mob, but a 60 Minutes sitdown right after the Leno armchair session on the preceding Thursday seemed—for him—strangely tone-deaf to the risk of overexposure. (Thank god he skipped the Gridiron Dinner.)…In this current crisis, I’m not in the mood for an exclusive peek at Sasha and Malia’s new swingset on the grounds of the White House. And it’s time the president dropped his gosh-this-is-fun-and-weird riff about the perks of being the most powerful man in the world. He talked about being wary of the presidential bubble, but it feels like he’s already trapped in there.
And:
A fascinating aspect of these frantic times is the speed with which reputations soar and crash and are suddenly made over. Just as we have seen demigods like Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin and all those high-flying CEOs toppled from their pedestals, we now see the ascendance of New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo as the unexpected man of the hour. He looked great when he went after Merrill Lynch’s commode-loving CEO John Thain over the obscene bonuses he paid out just before Merrill was taken over by Bank of America, and even better when he subpoenaed the excessive bonus details from AIG. Last night, he scored big when he announced that 15 of the top 20 retention-bonus recipients in AIG’s financial-products unit had agreed to give back their spoils, bringing Cuomo’s haul to $50 million—a pittance in the scheme of things (only 50 percent of the bonus bucks), but a big haul of psychic satisfaction to the walking wounded seething for some vestige of reparation.
The political rap on Andrew in the preceding seven years was that he was too mean and tough and abrasive (he was a boor in 2002 in his abortive run for the nomination for governor against Carl McCall) and also a bit crazy (ask his former wife Kerry Kennedy). But now New York is happy to get the asshole it needs.
(We refrain from making a crack…)
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.