Questions about Obama's Carolina trip

Kathleen Parker:

Either President Obama has wings of Kevlar — or he has the most incompetent scheduling staff in White House history. 

What president flies purposefully into the eye of a perfectly awful, two-front political storm, especially one as sordid as that plaguing North Carolina this week? Obama’s arrival in the Tar Heel State coincided with former senator John Edwards’s trial, as well as an exploding sexual harassment scandal involving the state’s Democratic Party leader. Jay Parmley recently resigned as executive director of the state party after an employee accused him of showing him a lewd photograph and making inappropriate sexual remarks. 

Talk about the audacity of hope. Or is it the incompetency of arrogance? 

Trouble is one thing presidents typically don’t seek out — especially during a tough reelection season. And North Carolina is nothing but trouble these days. 

Edwards’s trial, which began Monday, not only promises the resurrection of all the salacious details of his doomed tryst with Rielle Hunter, with whom he fathered a child while his wife, Elizabeth, was dying of cancer, but several high-profile Washington Democrats, including Obama’s deputy communications director, will likely be called as witnesses. 

Perhaps the president is merely displaying confidence in his incumbency, or solidarity with his staff members. On the other hand, is he perhaps clueless? As Dana Perino, former communications director for George W. Bush, remarked: “Over my dead body would I have sent President Bush to a state like that to do an event.”

... Either Obama’s staffers are so consumed with other matters that they failed to focus on what was happening down South. Or, they know they don’t have to worry about untoward treatment by the media. 

Alternatively, this avoidable risk suggests a standard of laxity in the midst of a campaign tour masquerading as a policy parade. Revealingly, the president’s target audience consists of unwitting metaphors for the state of the union — unemployed and deep in debt.

I suspect Obama's trips are a combination of arrogance and desperation.  While the two do not always go together, they can and they seem to fit this President's reelection effort.   I especially like Parker's description of Obama's pandering to students who have little hope of finding work with which to pay for the student loans they have regardless of the interest rate.