Anyone else notice something peculiar about today’s bill signing?
Typically, a bill signing takes place in the East Room, or in the Rose Garden if the weather is nice. The president is flanked by the bill’s co-sponsors who get to share in the glory and bask in the reporters’ flash bulbs and television cameras.
Not this time. There was no Congressional procession to the White House. No press conference on the driveway. Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, and Steny Hoyer did not get to stand beaming with pride as Obama signed into law billions upon billions of dollars of democratic spending. Nope. President Obama stood at a lecturn a thousand miles away from Pennsylvania Avenue, and sopped up the applause and credit alone.
The president may have been trying to de-politicize a most partisan bill, and infuse it with his goodwill and high approvals. But the absence of his Congressional allies at the signing of the biggest spending bill in American, make that world, history was notable. He may have said today that the bailout was for all Americans. But the optics of the event said something different: that the credit was his alone.
