I Like The Change

Tonight, MY President, Barack Hussein Obama, gave his very first press conference.

Most new presidents bury their first press conferences in the middle of the day so citizens don't see it in the raw. They just see the generously edited sound bits broadcast by a news media going easy on the new guy.

Not MY president! He went balls to the wall, live, in Prime Time, baby!

Good Gawd! We finally have a president who is intelligent, who thinks before he speaks, who takes the time to answer questions in depth instead of spouting arrogant, snarky sound bites in a condescending tone. Hallefuckinglujah!

I also noticed a cosmetic change in the presentation.

He abandoned the Dubya presidential podium and reverted to the old presidential podium.


I'm sure most of you didn't notice and have no idea what I am talking about.

Now, I'm no historian. I haven't done any real research, so most of what I'm putting forth is speculation. OK, all of it.

I'm guessing that the whole concept of a Presidential Podium originated with FDR when the idea was to disguise the fact that he couldn't stand upright without metal braces because he was a polio victim.


What better way to do that than by hiding his lower torso behind a substantial podium? Before that, presidents just stood up and talked wherever they were in front of whatever was put in front of them. No theatrical staging other than some patriotic bunting.


Our own Harry Truman, an unapologetic "bourbon and branch" aficianado, managed to turn the podium into button tufted bar with the president at the tap.


I think he was the first to formalize the practice of hanging the official presidential seal on any podium from which the POTUS was speaking.

Eisenhower certainly continued the practice.


As did JFK whom everyone acknowledges had a HUGE and widely used Presidential Podium.


As did LBJ.


And Nixon...


And Ford, who pioneered the first "modern", semi-phallic podium with the presidential seal bearing blue cap...



Continued by Carter...


And Reagan...



I know it was continued by George Herbert Walket Bush (a.k.a. "41"), but his son has so diluted the name that I couldn't find a single online image of George Herbert Walker standing behind the presidential podium. Seriously.


Clinton I could find...



But when Dubya took office he switched to some slender, wimpy, feminine, flaring, curvy podium with a tiny seal.




Next thing you know we had spent all the surplus of the Clinton years and gone deeply into debt by over-compensating our "manhood" in Afghanistan and Iraq.

So it is nice to see MY PRESIDENT visually disassociating himself from the previous administraion and reasserting the strong visual image of past administrations with the reintroduction of the old podium.