CAPITOL HILL BLUE

DOUG THOMPSON
Capitol Hill Blue
August 18, 2011

A Secret Service agent walks in front of President Obama's bus during a stop in Le Claire, Iowa, on Tuesday. (Jason Reed/Reuters)

President Barack Obama took his act on the road this week, traveling the Midwest in a $2.4 million armored bus in what his handlers claim was an attempt to “interact with real people.”

Next? He’s headed to Martha’s Vinyard for a vacation amid the rich and famous.

So much for mixing with the masses.

Crowds for his highly-hyped bus tour were tepid at best. The enthusiasm is gone from his carefully-staged events. So is his stirring rhetoric. The words that now spill from Obama’s mouth like verbal diarrhea are halted, hesitant and devoid of emotion.

For Obama, the magic is gone, along with the swagger that characterized his demeanor early in his presidency. The man who swept into office with such high expectation now appears worn, tired and unsure of himself.

GOP Presidential contender Mitt Romney calls the President’s trip the “Magical Misery Tour.” For a change, Romney’s right.

Polls show only one in four Americans approve of the President’s handling of the economy and that economy will drive voters in the 2012 election. Many of the voters are out of work and their unemployment benefits have either run out or will soon. Will they vote for the man they blame for their shattered lives? Not likely.

Watching the disintegration of Obama’s Presidency brings in mind two other recent one-term Presidents: Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush. Both came into office with high expectations. Both fell from grace quickly in the eyes of a skeptical American public.

What voters see now is not a champion of hope but a vapid President devoid of leadership, short of substance and hamstrung by his inexperience and inability to grasp the nuances of the job.

Even the President’s base is shaky. Liberals think he has sold out and African-American voters say he has done nothing to help them. His bus tour this week avoided the inner cities but concentrated on mostly-white middle America — a group that didn’t trust him in 2008 and say “see, we told you so” now.

Even Democratic political strategists looked at his monolithic black bus and shook their heads.

His opponents hit the road in buses adorned in bright colors, American flags and images of the Declaration of Independence. His bus is a black, Darth-Vader monster that looks deadly and threatened.

“It’s hard to excite people when you arrive in town in a vehicle that personifies doom and gloom,” one Democratic strategist grumbled to Capitol Hill Blue. “The bus was a big mistake.”

NOTE"

The "Highway of Shame"

Someone suggested to me earlier that the "bus tour" of Obama be called "The Highway of Shame" ...it should be towed all over the USA, pulled with a CAT tractor, so everyone has to see it and not forget what this administration has done to this country! Other buses could be filled with all the people who have helped him in office and for those who assist in keeping him in office and towed behind the huge 1.2 MILLION dollar bus made in Canada! Should have prison bars on the windows, representing the crooked wheeling and dealing over the past few years. As Trump said last night, "At least the bus wasn't made in China!" And I will add, "At least it doesn't have his Islamic logo painted on the side of the bus!

It should be noted that two buses were purchased at 1.2 MILLION EACH - American taxpayers are paying for this "ride" through the mid-West!