As someone who went running down the middle of the streets for a solid half hour when the polls came in in 2008, I have to say my esteem in President Obama has slid pretty steeply downhill in the past three years. Although there have definitely been moments of redemption, this is not one of them. I've been disappointed to see Obama bend to the pressures of trying to please everyone (remember how Guantanamo was supposed to be closed within a year of his inauguration?), and his latest veto of a bill limiting smog emissions fits right in that vein. Sometimes I feel like he's just trying to ride the waves of his popularity post Osama's death, and stay as neutral as possible until next November.
You can tell that the author isn't trying half as hard to stay neutral through his use of syntax. (Kidding!) But, really I heavily got the impression that the author sided with Lisa Jackson's assumption that the President's meeting would not be good news, implying that the bill would have been good news, implying that the author supported the bill. Do you follow me?
I did get this impression through the syntax of the first paragraph. Mr. Broder finds several different ways in all of three sentences to mention how this move, on Obama's part was totally out of left field. First he said the meeting was "without warning," then that Jackson "did not see [it] coming," and finished with calling the whole veto a "rare public rebuke." When you pair this obvious surprise on Broder's part with the assessment of the meeting as not 'good news,' and then following up with a quote calling the veto "the worst thing a Democratic president had ever done...Period," it's hard to imagine that he was supportive of Obama's move.
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