- KINGSTON, NY -- Last Thursday
President Obama made an appearance on the mid-morning pop-TV show, The
View. Criticized by opponents for brazenly exploiting the female-friendly
platform to boost his sagging ratings, the appearance was applauded
by supporters for cleverlyreaching out to a normally unpolitical audience
to drum up approval for his accomplishments and build support for his agenda.
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- Yucking it up with a panel of five ladies, the President
of the United States of America fielded questions about Lindsay Lohan,
Mel Gibson, Snooki, Chelsea's wedding and why he wasn't invited.
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- Obama's performance on The View generated saturation
media coverage. What was not covered by the press, was that while Mr.
Obama could find time for a third appearance on The View, he had (for
a second time) rejected an invitation from the President of Iran to engage
in a TV debate on matters of war and peace, life and death.
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- "We are ready to sit down with Mr. Obama face-to-face
and put the global issues on the table, man-to-man, freely, and in front
of the media and see whose solutions are better," challenged the Iranian
President.
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- Sarah Palin recently accused President Obama of having
"no cojones" on immigration. "Why won't Obama sit down
and debate his opponent 'man-to-man'?" asks Trends Research Institute
Director Gerald Celente. "Does he lack the cojones for this too?
Or is there some other, hidden foreign policyreason for why he won't engage?"
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- The double refusal to debate is an almost exact repeat
of history. Four years ago, in an August 2006 Trends in the News® feature,
Gerald Celente reported, "Bush Backs Down Twice from 'Evil Empire'
Challenge."
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- Back then the White House brushed off Ahmadinejad's call
for a televised debate: "The president's view is that he doesn't respond
publicly to private correspondence," said Tony Snow, Bush's White
House Press Secretary.
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- Four years later, Denis McDonough, chief of staff at
the White House National Security Council, blew it off as well: "I'm
not leaving it open and I'm not closing it."
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- Making sure the door was closed, White House Press
Secretary, Robert Gibbs responded with Robert "Gibberish": the
U.S. "would be willing to sit down and discuss Iran's illicit nuclear
program if Iran is serious about doing that. To date, that seriousness
has not been there."
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- "Serious" and "seriousness" is not
the issue. The only issue is: Why won't the President of the United States
sit down "man-to-man" with the President of Iran? It can't be
that he's too busy. After all, he finds time to fly to New York to sit
down with a bevy of lightweight, chattering TV personalities to entertain
an audience with so little to do with their lives that they waste an hour
of it watching The View.
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- Gibbs extricated the President from a mano-a-mano confrontation
by claiming that Ahmadinejad's invitation to debate was a sign of Iranian
weakness proof "the sanctions are beginning to have an impact".
This was not only an unproven assumption, it was irrelevant, a craven
cop-out, a disregard for democratic principles and a diminution of presidential
stature.
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- Ominous Signals: Is the refusal to debate a prelude
to war? Prior to the US invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, in a 60
Minutes interview, offered to debate President George W. Bush on TV,
denying that he had WMDs or ties to Al Qaeda. (Click on the above cited Trends
in the News® feature)
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- The offer was summarily dismissed by the White House
and laughed off by60 Minutes host Dan Rather, who asked Mr. Hussein
if his request was "a joke."
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- Two weeks later, the United States invaded Iraq. It
was no joke. There was no debate and there were also no WMDs or ties to
Al Qaeda. The agenda had long been set.
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- Publisher's Note: Surely, if the President can find time
for TV talk show small-talk, he should be able to squeeze in an
intelligent discussion with the elected leader of another sovereign country.
What is the big problem with a debate? What's there to lose? Cojones?
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- Or does Mr. Obama's refusal to debate Ahmedinejad mean
that the agenda as with Iraq and Bush is already set? This
past Sunday, Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
announced that the US military has a strike plan against Iran in place.
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- Zeke West
- Media Relations
- zwest@trendsresearch
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- ©MMX The Trends Research Institute®
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