Is the Thrill Gone?

How can President Obama know when the thrill is gone? When the kindest of responses from his fiercest apologists, the mainstream media, was a long, collective, disappointed sigh to his speech concerning the BP oil spill. CNN has a rather harsh montage of “pundit response” from the speech on their website.

Joan Walsh called the speech “Just Words” saying that Obama was not “playing to win” politically. Rachel Maddow physically dropped her head in disappointment when asked by Keith Olbermann for her reaction to the speech. She then added that America wanted a little more “adult talk from the President on this.”

Maddow continued to call the speech a “sobering spectacle”, hardly a rave review. Ezra Klein, when asked by Rachel Maddow if the president made the “best possible case for energy reform” (which is what Klein earlier that day said that Obama had to do in his speech), Klein responded with “No, I don’t.” He then went on to clarify today that the speech wasn’t “that bad of a speech. It was more of a bad situation.”

The most telling commentary, though, comes from Keith Olbermann’s immediate response panel with Chris Matthews and Howard Fineman of Newsweek.

Some of the greatest commentary (in case you can’t stomach all three of them at once on video):

• Matthews, in an uncharacteristic show of critical thought, said that Obama failed to explain how the President of the United States has the power to force BP to do the things that Obama said he was going to make them do.
• Fineman said “He should have been Commander-in-Chief tonight… Tell everybody [what’s going on]. They’ve been watching television for the last 59 days, they want to know how we are doing.”
• Olbermann responded with “I don’t think he [the president] aimed low [with his speech]. I don’t think he aimed at all.”
• And the final nail in the coffin of what was the formerly known as the “thrill up my leg” syndrome, Matthews said, “I don’t sense executive command.”

The best part? Gibbs being forced to respond that Olbermann and Maddow and the rest of the left in the mainstream media aren’t living in the same place as “real Americans.”

But who are we kidding? All President Obama needs to do is shove another 2,000+ page gross expansion of government down our throats and the mainstream media will be back by his side in no time. As Senator Jim Inhofe (R, Ok.) explained today, that is exactly what the President is planning to do with cap-and-trade.

A sobering reminder that although a narrative contrary to the normal sickening, in-the-tank, pro-everything Obama media agenda seems to have temporarily dominated the mainstream media for one day, it’s probably only a matter of time before they resume their familiar supine position at the feet of the Dear Leader.