COMMENTARY | If there was anything that encapsulated President Barack Obama's cluelessness where it comes to economic matters and his inability to empathize with people, it was his exchange with a woman whose engineer husband has been out of work.
The incident took place in a video hookup on Google Plus, according to Hot Air. The woman, Jennifer Wedel, asked Obama why the government is still admitting foreign engineers to the country under H1B visas while people like her husband -- a semiconductor engineer -- cannot find work.
Obama's response was to express disbelief that Mr. Wedel cannot find work, as it was his impression the market for engineers of his sort is booming. Then he suggested he found the fact Mrs. Wedel's was not able to find a job despite months of looking was, well, interesting.
Obama has often been compared to Mr. Spock of "Star Trek" by his admirers as Jeff Greenwald once did in Salon. Obama has denied the comparison, suggesting to Barbara Walters that he is a "softy," according to USA Today.
But Obama's "interesting" was just the cold, analytical response that the fictional Vulcan science officer would have made to the woman's plight, though he would have raised an eyebrow and said, "fascinating" instead.
American presidents are supposed to feel, to have the ability to empathize will people who are in pain. Bill Clinton could emote at the drop of the hat, though one wondered how much of it was real and how much of it was method acting. George W. Bush was always sincere when he tried to comfort the bereaved. If Obama is the cold, analytical Spock, Bush was the feeling, sometimes brash Captain Kirk.
The Republicans are already having some fun with the Obama exchange with Wedel. Obama not only comes across as cold and unfeeling, but as clueless. Despite what he told Wedel, the market for semiconductor engineers has contracted under his administration. And yet Obama seemed to imply that the problem was with Mr. Wedel and not with the economy that he was presiding over. That attitude is going to cost the president as the general election campaign draws nigh.
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