With the Middle East in turmoil and a budget impasse threatening to shut down the government, President Obama on Monday morning released a video formally announcing his reelection bid.
<p>The video is kind of a relic of 2008 – it tries to recapture the spirit of a time when Obama was a fresh face offering the nation a change from the darkness of the Bush era. But Obama can’t really pronounce it “Morning in America” just yet, so the video doesn’t talk about anything he’s actually done as president.</p> <p> Instead, it features a number of supporters who are still starry-eyed about Obama. One of the more revealing quotes comes from a presumably college-aged guy who says he was too young to vote for Obama the first time around, but knew he’d be able to vote to reelect him. In other words, this was predetermined regardless of if he actually accomplished anything as president.</p> <p>As Rep. Paul Ryan, R.-Wis, put it on Fox News Sunday, “I find it kind of ironic that the week we’re trying to engage the president, the Democrats and the country with an honest debate about our budget, with real solutions to fix this country’s problems and prevent a debt crisis, the president is launching his re-election campaign.”</p> <p>The reelection video tries to get around this criticism by featuring a woman who says she knows its up to his supporters to get the campaign started because Obama is too busy being president.</p> <p>Obama himself made this point in the email he sent to supporters this morning accompanying the video, which read, “So even though I’m focused on the job you elected me to do, and the race may not reach full speed for a year or more, the work of laying the foundation for our campaign must start today.”</p> <p>Yet it’s hard to see what’s the rush. None of the leading GOP candidates have formally declared, and several of them haven’t even formed exploratory committees.</p>
