The $200 Million Dollar Man?

I am almost certain that you have seen and/or heard the reports of President Obama's recent trip to India and Asia. Big, bold headlines (the same adjectives might well be applied to mouths) have proclaimed that the cost of the trip was 200 million dollars A DAY -- or 2 billion dollars for the entire 10-day event.

How could the President justify such an enormous expense while poor Americans were sitting at home with no jobs, no food, no healthcare, and no ability to buy 3D televisions for the holidays? Such has been the rhetoric sprouting all over the internet, from the mouths of angry talk-show hosts (and not a few politicians) and on cable news shows.

The height of the presidential paranoia may have occurred on November 4, on Anderson Cooper's show on CNN, when Cooper interviewed Rep. Michele Bachmann from Minnesota. Ms. Bachmann was asked to give some specifics about how Republicans in the new session of Congress were planning to cut the federal budget. She didn't really answer the question, but did have the following comment:

“I think we know that just within a day or so the president of the United States will be taking a trip over to India that is expected to cost the taxpayers $200 million a day. He’s taking 2,000 people with him. He’ll be renting over 870 rooms in India, and these are five-star hotel rooms at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. This is the kind of over-the-top spending.”

Now, I will grant you that I would, indeed, consider that kind of spending to be "over-the-top" and fairly insensitive on the part of the Prez...if it were true! Unfortunately, it appears that Ms. Bachmann and many of the other voices that have been decrying the expense of this official state visit by our sitting President have been blathering a story picked up from the Internet without ever bothering to ask whether or not it was true or accurate!

New York Times writer Thomas Friedman outlines the fact-checking done as a follow-up to the story by Anderson Cooper and his organization in an article published on November 16 ( you can read it here.)

According to Cooper, the $200 million a day figure had originated from a quote by “an alleged Indian provincial official,” from the Indian state of Maharashtra, “reported by India’s Press Trust, their equivalent of our A.P. or Reuters. I say ‘alleged,’ provincial official,” Cooper added, “because we have no idea who this person is -- no name was given."

As Friedman put it so well: "It is hard to get any more flimsy than a senior unnamed Indian official from Maharashtra talking about the cost of an Asian trip by the American president"

But, if it's on the Internet, it must be true (evidently.) Such prominent broadcasters as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck (and don't forget the aforementioned Rep. Bachmann) reported it as fact, adding that there would be an additional 3,000 people and 34 Navy warships" accompanying the President on his "vacation."

One is reminded of the obsequious bloviating of Senator Joseph McCarthy and the response-in-kind of Army Special Counsel Joseph Welch: "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

My father impressed upon me the importance of voting and participation in the political process we have in America. His words to me were along this line: "If you don't vote, you have no right to complain. And if you do vote, and your candidate doesn't win, just remember that it is still your government and the President still deserves your respect. He is, after all is said and done, the President."


Thanks, Dad; I wish we could remember that in what passes for political discourse these days. And I just wish people would take the time to get their dadgum facts straight before they start regurgitating what they've heard all over the place!


Harrumph!