One of the highest bits of praise there is, I think, is saying that everything that a person (or an organization) does is intentional. The idea is that they are extremely intelligent and aware of what's going on, that nothing gets by them. It also suggests that they are focused, that they are not wasting words or wasting actions or wasting time. I like to consider myself fairly sharp, but I definitely don't fall into this category.
At some point in his 2008 Presidential Campaign, I began to consider that Barack Obama was doing everything intentionally. Now I'm not so sure. It seems to me that I've read a lot of criticism about Obama's presidency, especially recently with the President not vetoing a bill that allows the government to jail Americans suspected of terrorism indefinitely. Perhaps this is what's driving a lot of the status-updates I've been seeing recently about the PROTECT IP Act and SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act). Perhaps this is all holdover angst from the President and the Democrats capitulating to Republicans over the last three years despite having the majority of people in congress. In any event, I'm definitely wondering what the common thread is, here. What's he trying to do, exactly?
There's been a little talk on the radio recently of a comment Mr. Obama made last year that he would rather be a, "really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president." Apparently, he is no longer willing to address that comment with the media. I think it would be difficult to argue that he hasn't been at least good; the Iraq war has been formally ended, Don't Ask Don't Tell has been repealed, Health Care Reform was passed in 2010, Osama Bin Laden has been killed... that's a fairly impressive list, I would think. But there's still a sort of energy around liberals that what's been done hasn't been enough. They'll look at the debt ceiling crisis, the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the still-high unemployment rate and see a presidency that was big on promise, but just not there on certain results.
It's a lot easier to appear as though everything you do is intentional when there's nobody playing defense. That is, that another person's move can't force you to counter-move. You can have a great plan in chess, but someone may be able to play their game in such a way to nullify your plan. When you're campaigning, you don't have to worry about that. If you're making a work of art, you don't have to worry about that (If I didn't mention it before, I think Eternal Sunshine is also completely intentional). If you're a television station, you don't have to do that.
The Stranger today pointed me at a FOX News bit where they substituted in Barack Obama's photo for Mitt Romney. Sometimes it seems hard to believe that all the things they do over there are intentional, because there are a lot of small, "screw-up" type things like misspelling "Obama" as "Osama" early on. However, the sheer multitude of such "screw-ups" suggests to me that it's really not a screw-up at all. If people repeatedly screwed up a thing in a normal workplace, there would be a staff meeting to correct it and it wouldn't happen anymore (or at least with less frequency). The fact that this has happened time and time again tells me that it's being implicitly encouraged.
I really think sometimes that if you watch FOX News, it's really like watching the man behind the curtain do his thing. It's really out there for everyone to see. And then there's the worrying thing: how many people agree with it.
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