I read the headline below in the NYT and I thought, ‘what dope at the White House let the President’s reading list get out?’ That headline alone is ammunition for his political enemies….while the country’s economy gyrates with uncertainty, our leader is reading ‘fiction.’ Fiction? You know that could end up in an ad from the RNC.
Of course he can read whatever he wants and I don’t care what he reads — but simply from a tactical, and political view point you wonder who is doing the President’s p/r.
Yes, I know, the White House did not write that headline, the NY Times did…but supplying the book list was an invitation to trouble. The list is such an easy target for political enemies no matter what is on it. The list did not have to be released.
You can take any reading list of any President and make it into something unflattering politically….…so why release it? I would not have. Would you?
August 20, 2011
Obama Summer Reading List Leans Toward Fiction
By REUTERS
VINEYARD HAVEN, Massachusetts (Reuters) – President Barack Obama, perhaps seeking a break from harsh reality after a tough summer battling the economy and Republicans in Congress, has picked a summer reading list that is long on fiction.
The White House says four of the five books that Democrat Obama has to choose from during a nine-day family vacation here are novels.
Obama’s reading list — like the criticism from Republicans for vacationing while the economy is stumbling — is a rite of the summer.
But his choices ignored the weighty biographies of great Americans typically on a president’s reading list.
Obama picked up two of the books on an outing with daughters Sasha and Malia on Friday: “The Bayou Trilogy,” a mystery collection by Daniel Woodrell set in Louisiana, and “Rodin’s Debutante,” a novel by Ward Just with a character who becomes politically conscious after moving to a rough neighborhood on Chicago’s south side, echoing Obama’s time there as a community organizer before he entered politics.
The president also bought along books: “Cutting for Stone,” a novel by Abraham Verghese that traces the lives of two boys who are born joined at the skull in Ethiopia, and “To the End of the Land,” a novel by David Grossman of a mother who tries to keep her son alive while he is at war by hiking the length of Israel, hoping that if she cannot be reached to be told of his death, he won’t die.
He also brought “The Warmth of Other Suns,” by Isabel Wilkerson, the only non-fiction work on the list, which describes America’s migration of blacks from the South.
Republican critics have slammed Obama for vacationing for the third consecutive summer on Martha’s Vineyard, an upscale island off the Massachusetts coast which was also favored by Democratic presidents John Kennedy and Bill Clinton.
They say vacationing CLICK HERE
