Obama Wrote Me. I Wrote Back.

Posted By: Peter DavidPosted On:

I received the following email today from Barack Obama. Apparently we’re on a first name basis: He calls me “Peter” and signs his “Barack.” Which is kind of weird because if I met him I somehow can’t see me calling him “Mr. President” and him saying, “Please, call me Barack.”

In any event, this was the letter:

This is in your hands, Peter

Peter —

There have been many times in my life when I’ve been counted out — told that I couldn’t do it, told not to speak out for what I believe in, told to not even run in the first place.

I’ve only gotten this far because I’ve had people like you with me every step of the way.

Right now the other side is trying to obliterate the hard work we’ve put in on the ground in this campaign by flooding the airwaves with factually inaccurate, negative attack ads.

If they win, they’re going to dismantle everything we’ve accomplished together over the past three and a half years, and turn back the clock to the same failed policies that got us into this mess in the first place.

We cannot let that happen. Please donate $3 or more today:

Thanks. It means a lot to know you’ve got my back.

Barack

And because I was in a mood, I responded thusly:

Dear Mr. President:

With all respect–and I know you won’t read this–it’s not my job to have your back. It’s your job to have the backs of millions of people. People who are counting on you. People whose health and in many cases lives are hinging upon your reelection.

Yes, I’m aware that in the debate, you won on the facts. And in 1960, Nixon won on the facts (at least to anyone who was listening on the radio.) But being on television demands other characteristics upon which many Americans base their judgments. Romney had it. You did not. Granted, Romney had much less to lose than you did, but you can’t stand there and appear that you’re afraid of losing.

The fact is that more people are like George W. Bush than anyone wants to admit. They judge not based on fact, but on their gut. No one, not even your most ardent supporters, could watch the way you handled yourself and have a good feeling in their guts about it.

I’m fully aware that debating Romney is like falling into the middle of the Monty Python “Argument Clinic” sketch. “You’re lying!” “No, I’m not.” You need to realize what Romney is: he’s a bully. A bully needs to be stripped of his power, and the best way to deal with the bully that Mitt Romney is is to laugh at him. Don’t take him seriously. Explicitly state that it’s hard to keep a straight face debating with him because he’s so ridiculous. Treat him like a joke. Tear him apart. Reduce him to a punchline. Because that’s what we need you to do.

Have our back.

Very truly yours,

Peter David

34 comments on “Obama Wrote Me. I Wrote Back.”

  2. Crossing every finger I have and then crossing those clumps of fingers (way more difficult than you may think) in hopes that the President WILL read your response and follow your advice!

  3. Well said. Have you ever thought about getting into politics, at least as a speech writer? After all, sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

  4. Yeah, that was a crummy performance on Obama’s behalf the other night. But we are who we elect, and if America wants to go with Romney because he was “on” for debate night, despite the lies he was spewing, then America deserves what it gets.

    1. Well, THEY may deserve what THEY get – but i don’t deserve it, and i’d get it too.

  5. I don’t think people should get behind the “wrassling” mentality that our politicians should provide “zingers” and insults to win a debate, instead of a plan. Just because you feel humiliated in front of your Republican friends and you couldn’t say “our guy was wittier than your guy”, you decide to say the president let you down?

    1. Thank you for your thoughts. I particularly liked the way you put quotes around things I never said and concluded with something else not in quotes but that I also never said. That’s always fun.

      PAD

      1. What’s even more ‘fun’ is when a candidate gets into office on the combined strength of the constituents, and suddenly finds that the people will just switch to only thinking of themselves and abandon the candidate to the yellow journalism of today’s opinionated ‘news’ media. Suddenly, all the constituents want is political theater in their favor instead of substance.

      2. But I never claimed I was quoting you. I just put euphemisms in quotes, but I never claimed you said those exact words. Maybe that is not the MLA standard for euphemisms, but I don’t see how anyone would think I was misquoting you.

      3. To quote someone, one must use that person’s own words. Thus, you misquoted PAD. I suppose you could say you we’re paraphrasing him, but that would require you to express the same meaning in different words. Which you also didn’t do, as I got two different meanings from PAD’s post and yours. So, I’m not quite sure where that leaves us.

        –Daryl

      4. Tim,

        The easy way to not look like you’re misquoting someone or just making up quotes is not to use quotation marks. For emphasis, use tags.On WordPress based blogs, you would use the > and and use [ for < since using the real symbols would make you unable to see what to do.

        Statement – That comment was insane.

        Emphasis – That comment was [I]insane.[/I]

        Result – That comment was insane.

        Or – That comment was insane.

        You use I for italics and B for bold. You can loop in just one word or entire paragraphs that was.

      5. And I lost a part of my post because of the tags.

        Okay.

        The example where I used the [ and ] symbols?

        You would actually use > where I used ] and use < where I used [.

        Hope that was clear.

      6. Jeepers, PAD (et al). I know you’ve run into folks attributing things to you that you’ve never said or done, so I can see why you may be particularly sensitive to being misquoted.

        But Tim’s comment didn’t strike me as an attempt to literally quote you. Nor would I expect it to strike any reasonable person as an attempt to attribute specific words to you.

        Respond to him for his presumption that your comments stem from feeling humiliated in front of your Republican friends. But to say something like “you deliberately misquoted me” (see what I did there?) when someone makes the text attempt at air quotes is unnecessary.

      7. In all fairness to Tim, the use of quotes around words used in an ironic or sardonic sense has long been established as acceptable and even proper, even when not actually quoting anybody, and should not be taken as an indication of quoting any actual source.

        Quotation Marks Beyond Quoting

        Quotation marks may additionally be used to indicate words used ironically or with some reservation.
        • The great march of “progress” has left millions impoverished and hungry.

        — http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/owlprint/577/

      8. As with most problems in life, we can turn to comics to solve them for us. Yes even it cums to grammar. In this case Garth Ennis from Preacher 59. Unfortunatly I couldnt find a scan of the page anywhere online (which is hilarious)so I actually typed the whole thing out becuz its that good.

        (Herr Starr has just finished reading a report from Hoover and enraged pulls out his pistol and blows it to bits.)

        Herr Starr: Improper use of inverted commas, Hoover! IMPROPER USE OF INVERTED COMMMAS!!

        Hoover: Wh-wh-what’d I do?

        Starr: What did you do? You did what you always do, Hoover! You fûçkëd up! This report of yours! This Samson Team Survivors–An Evaluation!

        You’ve got inverted commas round each of the paragraph headings! You’ve got them round “disposition”, round “critical shortages”, round “recruitment difficulties”–Now why have you fûçkìņg done that, Hoover?

        Hoover: Inverted commas?

        Miss Featherstone: He means quotes, you know, like (begins to make quotation gesture with her hands).

        Starr: Don’t do that! Don’t ever do that! I hate that šhìŧ! LET’S FÙÇKÍNG HEAR IT, HOOVER!

        Hoover: Well, I put them in for emphasis–

        Starr: But inverted commas aren’t for emphasis are they? No! Inverted commas are for FÙÇKÍNG QUOTATION!

        Like if I was to call you can illiterate fûçkìņg çûm-sodden dickrag, you would write — Herr Starr COMMA with his usual searing insight COMMA today referred to me as OPEN QUOATES AN ILLITERATE FÙÇKÍNG ÇÙM HYPHEN SODDEN DICKRAG CLOSE QUOTES PERIOD!

        That’s how you use them, Hoover! That’s what they’re for!

        Anyway like Hoover I imagine Tim to be an incompetent and illiterate dipshit.

  6. Peter, I’ll bet if you added several zeroes to that requested three bucks, I’ll bet you’d get a personal response. Not that I’m recommending it by any means, just a bit of idle speculation.

    1. Because if you donate a large sum of money to anyone, especially any politician running for office, they are going to respond. What’s your point?

      If you sent me a bunch of money, I’d respond, too.

  7. On topic/off topic…

    “The fact is that more people are like George W. Bush than anyone wants to admit. They judge not based on fact, but on their gut.”

    “Unbelievable jobs numbers €¦these Chicago guys will do anything €¦can’t debate so change numbers” – Jack Welch

    Well, Jack Welch is now a joke. Ol’ Jack got grilled tonight on MSNBC and CNN and flat out said that he has no proof of anything being done while simultaneously claiming that he stands behind his statement and claiming that he made no such accusation and occasionally throwing phrases like “cook the books” into the conversation. But his gut said that something must be wrong so he let accusations fly and now that accusation, backed by his reputation and standing, is being thrown around as the truth in the alternate reality bubble of the conservative media and repeated by the faithful.

    And right now we’re getting the other “judge not based on fact, but on their gut” moment going on with the polls. Dean Chambers, a, basically, glorified blogger, decided that the polls are skewed by oversampling Democrats. did he get that idea by serious analysis of the data? No. By his own words on the matter, he just knew “in his gut” that the polls must somehow be wrong.

    So he’s made up his own math on the polls to show that the guy he likes is winning by anywhere from 3 to 11 percentage points. And all the faithful, who are ignoring such fun facts as even Fox News polling data shows that Obama is ahead, have decided that the facts aren’t what their guts say and so the facts must be wrong. And of course, the alternate reality bubble of the conservative media is presenting his bull&%!^ as facts and the faithful are repeating this “fact” everywhere. Yes, that’s right, the alternate reality bubble now has its own fantasy world polling data based on their gut.

    I’m going to be less polite about it than you. Right now there’s a huge chunk of the Right out there that have moved way beyond just wanting to “judge not based on fact, but on their gut” and are starting to look like a delusional religious cult.

    1. and are starting to look like a delusional religious cult.

      And a very dangerous one at that.

      Video shows ‘scientist’ in Congress saying evolution is from ‘pit of Hëll’
      http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/05/14203607-video-shows-scientist-in-congress-saying-evolution-is-from-pit-of-hëll?lite

      This guy is not only somehow in Congress, but he chairs the House Science Committee’s panel on investigations and oversight

      So, I’ll be blunt: What. The. Fûçk?

      6. Wow. I hadn’t looked at all the members of the Committee before. With comments & views like those, none of them should be allowed to be politicians.

  8. PAD, from what I’ve read, nobody needs to tell Obama that he didn’t do well in the debate. Apparently he walked off the stage thinking it didn’t go well and got even more upset with himself after he saw the video.

    I think the first debate never matters in the long run and it won’t this time, either. Obama will learn from this and do better next time. People will forget the first debate by the time the second debate is over. Chances are there won’t be any decisive victories either way and the debates will end up feeling like they didn’t affect the election at all.

    1. I do admit the President wasn’t too sharp in this debate, and I hope what you are saying is true, Jason.

    2. I personally take my comfort from having read that the vast majority of the voting public makes up its mind by the end of July, so a bad performance at the debate is unlikely to move much of anyone. I’ve also read that Undecided’s are supposed to be less of the electorate this year. Given that President Obama has been consistently ahead in the polls, I’m guardedly optimistic.

      All that said (written), I can easily see people who watch only the first debate, decide they’ve got the measure of the candidates and not bother watching the rest of them. The old saying goes that, “You only get one chance to make a first impression.” I realize that you’d have to have been living under a rock in order to avoid exposure to the candidates, but this is the first time that they’ve been together in any type of head-to-head adversarial setting. Obama was correct to have been upset. I realize that it’s very difficult to counter an opponent when the moderator lets him get away with utilizing the Gish Gallop, but that’s an explanation, not an excuse.

  10. What Romney did in this debate is known as spreading aka “the Gish Gallop” (named after Creationist Duane Gish, who perfected it in his “debates” with evolution scientists — note that each of the words in the name is a separate website link — click them both!). A competent moderator would’ve recognized it and put a stop to it. Too bad there wasn’t one Wednesday night.

  11. Well, Obama admitted today that he was “too polite” to Romney, so with any luck we’ll see Mitt get rhetorically pantsed next debate.

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