Maureen Dowd on Cool Hand Barack!

Dear Commons Community,

The media coverage of the death of  Osama bin Laden and accolades for President Obama, his national security staff and the Navy Seals are in full swing.   Maureen Dowd has a column today on “Cool Hand Barack”.   She makes the point that the President is cool under pressure much more so than his detractors have given him credit for.  She describes how the President on Saturday night was roasting a number of individuals while having just made what will likely be the most important and daring decision of his first term in office.  In typical Dowd style, here is the essence of her column:

“After giving the order for members of a Navy Seals team to execute a fantastically daring plan to, let’s be honest, execute Osama bin Laden, Barack Obama put on a tuxedo and gave a comedy speech Saturday night in a Washington ballroom of tippling journalists and Hollywood stars.

If we could have seen everything unfolding in real time, it would have had the same dramatic effect as the intercutting in the president’s favorite movie, “The Godfather,” when Michael Corleone calmly acts as godfather at his nephew’s baptism at church, even as his lieutenants carry out the gory hits he has ordered on rival mobsters.

Just substitute “Leave the copter, take the corpse” for ‘Leave the gun, take the cannoli.’”

Dowd also takes a swipe at Sarah Plain “ who was so tacky that she didn’t mention Obama’s name in her congratulations”.

A Great Read!

Tony