8-10 Year Presidency?

Okay, I wasn’t going to say anything about this gaffe by Obama, but it seems everyone in the blogosphere is mentioning it.

Honestly, there’ s a certain tit-for-tat on this; after 8 years of watching every minor verbal stumble of George W. Bush be portrayed as proof of his being a drooling semi-sentient moron, I have very little sympathy for the people who are upset when people do the same thing to Obama. Welcome to the big leagues kids, where what you throw at others is likely to be thrown right back at you.

Nevertheless, Obama’s comment about how he might be dealing with foreign dignitaries for the next “8 to 10 years” isn’t that far off the mark. Yes, you can say it indicates a little presumptuousness, and that if he’d said “four to eight years” that would have been better. Nevertheless, it’s not all that arrogant, and a good Presidential candidate should be thinking about what his entire term in office would be like. And if he’d said “8 to 9 years” no one would be raising an eyebrow, because once you’re a major party’s presumptive nominee you’re already someone foreign dignitaries will want to talk to, and once you’re President-Elect, you’ll be doing even more of that.

This is all much ado about very little if you ask me.