Posted 5:44 PM by steve

Even though I usually disagreed with him on the substance, I always gave Bill Clinton credit while he was President for recognizing the value in keeping himself in front of the public and doing so in ways that conveyed 'Hey, I'm on your side". It seemed that hardly a day would pass without Clinton offering up his views on X or Y or pledging that the government would look into A or B. While a fair amount was of the trivial variety, and even though Clinton offered more than he ever delivered, to the people who cared about X or Y or A or B, Clinton's statements connected with them and, in my mind, contributed to Clinton's high approval ratings.

Then along came Bush who, for whatever reason, thought it unnecessary to maintain the same sense of camaraderie with the public. No 'I feel your pain' moments, no sense of making people think he understood what they were going through on a day to day basis. Note: Bush's high point came when he put his arm around the shoulders of the fireman at Ground Zero. That may have been the last time he ever gave the public a chance to see him as the nice guy his supporters claim he is.

And now comes Obama who, to his credit, is picking up where Clinton left off, in announcing his desire to see a playoff system in college football and announcing that the FCC should delay the conversion to all-digital TV because not enough people have yet bought the digital converters they'll need to keep getting a picture on their old analog TV sets.

While I think that Obama ought to have bigger fish to fry (what with the economy in bad shape, terrorism still a problem and all that), I like college football they way it is (actually, I liked it better before the BCS) and I don't know why the federal government needs to be giving people money to upgrade their TV sets, I give him credit for making an effort to connect with the American public, to letting us know he's not a guy who plans on hiding out in the White House, oblivious to what the rest of us are doing and going through.