Sunday, April 15, 2012

The Horse Chestnut

Belmont Club » Burdened by Success: "Odds are that $35,800 doesn’t buy a lot of air time in the White House these days, at least not in comparison to the big boys who can command billions and hundreds of billions of dollars in influence.  But given the amount of money it has received from supporters since 2008, when it opened for 24 hour business, there must be a lot of chits outstanding.

But the trouble with operating like an Internet Cafe is that you have to give your customers what they came for. Sooner or later, they get tired of staring at the logo on the screen. To understand his problem, imagine President Obama as a beleaguered short order cook who has 200 pending orders for burgers pinned to the order board and can’t bear to tell them he doesn’t know how to cook; that it was all a misunderstanding. He sold all the orders on the strength of a beautifully printed menu and a good line of patter at the door.

But in the end he doesn’t know a horse from a horse chestnut and neither does his waiter, David Axelrod."