Us politics

Political theatre, that’s what Barack Obama delivered in Afghanistan last night. A year on from the death of Osama Bin Laden, and with the US elections fast approaching, here was the President reheating his existing timetable for withdrawal — and offering it up as reassurance for weary Afghans and Americans alike. There were some new details, courtesy of an ‘Enduring Strategic Partnership Agreement’ signed with Hamid Karzai, but this was mostly about the symbolism and rhetoric. As Obama put it himself, ‘We can see the light of a new day on the horizon.’ Except this ‘new day’ quickly slipped back into night. A couple of hours after Obama had left the country, a suicide bomb attack left at least seven people dead in Kabul.

This compilation of President Obama's gaffes is going viral, as they say.     Quite amusing. There's something satisfying about seeing that 'President Cool'  isn't such a smooth operator. Obama is good with teleprompters, but he blunders when extemporising. It's mostly forgotten that, in the 2008 debates against Hillary Clinton, he often looked and sounded out of his depth.   Still, it is a bit hysterical — and humourless — for Gary L Bauer to call his video '53 seconds that should end the Obama presidency', in reference to Rick Perry's infamous disaster answer in a debate.   Voters don't really care about presidential bloopers. And is it wise for Republicans to attack the president for verbal clumsiness?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG61tGeagWo So, Rick Santorum has called it quits and abandoned his quest for the nomination. The decision effectively makes Romney the 2012 Republican nominee. Finally. Republican Party chiefs will feel a sense of relief after an exhaustive and bruising primary season in which the party seemed to be beating itself up for months on end. But they must also reckon that a candidate who took so long to defeat his adversaries for the nomination – despite his advantage in terms of campaign funding – can't stand much of chance against the might of the Democratic machine and as talented a campaigner as President Obama.

Mad Men may not be jumping the sharks quite yet, but the latest series is showing signs of collapsing under the weight of its own hype. The carefully built ambiguity of the first few seasons is being lost, replaced by cheesy self-awareness and standard-issue liberal correctness. In this week’s episode, which was broadcast in America last night and will be shown here tomorrow, there was even a little political swipe at Republican candidate Mitt Romney. In the scene above, the character Henry Francis, a political operator for New York mayor John Lindsay, says he doesn’t want his boss to attend an event in Michigan ‘because Romney's a clown and I don’t want him standing next to him'.

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com Did you see the presidential candidate Rick Santorum lose his cool with a New York Times reporter? If not, you can watch it above. It was a trivial incident, really, but we live in a trivial media age in which politicians think that embarrassing moments are something to boast about. Losing your temper shows that you are human, rather than a politician. Santorum and his spinners have tried to whip up the little row for all it's worth ahead of his ‘last chance’ primary in Wisconsin. Santorum's anger, they say, shows he is a ‘real Republican' — i.e. not like the fake Mitt Romney. Rick doesn't mind sticking it to the evil liberal media, you see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ajuq5u3IoSQ As leaders from 53 nations gather in Seoul for the second Nuclear Security Summit, President Obama spoke of his ‘vision of a world without nuclear weapons’. It’s a vision he described during his 2008 campaign, and which was later the focus of his 2009 speech in Prague. Today, as then, he talked about the ‘obligation’ he feels to act on this in strikingly personal terms: ‘I say it as a father, who wants my two young daughters to grow up in a world where everything they know and love can’t be instantly wiped out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKtNYmsarUE Presidential candidates are used to having all sorts of derogatory monikers hurled in their direction. But they don’t expect them to come from one of their own senior advisers. And yet that’s exactly what’s happened to Mitt Romney this week. On Wednesday, just after Romney had won the Illinois primary and secured the endorsement of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Eric Fehrnstrom told CNN: ‘Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes.