PrintMarch 18, 2009
White House Teleprompter Meltdown
Barack Obama's dependence on a teleprompter may become the defining dependency of his presidency. He dodged fate yesterday, at a St Patrick's Day party with Ireland's Prime Minister Brian Cowen as his guest. The luck of the Irish favored O'Bama, not Cowen.
The omnipresent teleprompter, without whose instructions Obama rarely speaks, gave the visiting Irish Prime Minister a rerun of Obama's remarks, which he dutifully repeated for about 20 seconds before realizing he was repeating his host's address. Obama graciously stepped-in, and then appeared to thank himself, apparently delivering Cowen's remarks.
But for the luck of the Irish bypassing the real Irishman, Obama's oratorical limitations would have been visible for all the world to see.
Rush Limbaugh is making fun of Obama's teleprompterless ineloquence ("Obama's teleprompter told him to say...."), but the point is spreading throughout the liberal media as well. Yesterday, prior to the teleprompter meltdown, Maureen Dowd wrote:
At the White House on Monday, the president read reporters some tough talk from the teleprompter about the chuckleheads at A.I.G., accusing them of "recklessness and greed."
As dissatisfaction with Obama mounts, expect the teleprompter to become a much more familiar topic of conversation.
