Obama Tries the Big Bird Approach

President Obama seems to have stolen a page from the PBS playbook as his approach to selling his position on the government shutdown.

Everyone, of course, is familiar to the way PBS reacts any time there is any mention of cutting their subsidies – they immediately scream “You want to kill Big Bird!” The logic seems to be that Sesame Street would have to be the first program cut. Right – that’s definitely what would happen. But it’s a strategy that works – PBS still gets their handouts every year.

Local governments often use the same approach. “If you don’t vote for the new bond issue,” city hall warns in ominous tones, “here’s the list of fire stations we’ll be closing …” Funny that it’s never “We’ll have to lay off half a dozen of the nasty, arrogant clerks who take such pleasure in ignoring you when you visit city hall”, isn’t it?

Obama’s variant on the Big Bird strategy is that he is closing the monuments on the Capitol Mall, threatening to cut out the service academies sports events (even though the academy athletic programs are privately funded), shutting down TV broadcasts to overseas troops, shutting private businesses located in national parks, and lots of other petty, vindictive acts. The obvious intent of his actions is to maximize rather than minimize the pain of the shutdown for American citizens.

This is not what one would hope for from the nation’s leaders, but it’s not all that surprising from this one.