That darn school speech.

The President making a speech to school children does not bother me. What continues to astound is three fold:

1. Obama's handlers are inept. The original "lesson plan" to go along with the speech, like the creepy "POTUS" seal before he even had the nomination, seems to reflect an ongoing unnerving and cultish atmosphere in the White House. The original plans suggested that students "write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president." After the outcry it was changed to "Write letters to themselves about how they can achieve their short-term and long-term education goals."

Here's the rub: no one in the room while this plan was written stopped and said "write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president." might be a problem. Just as no one had the sense to stop the design of the fake Presidential seal before it was unveiled to a repelled nation. This is politics 101. There are gross assumptions in the statement "Write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president." Did White House aides truly see no problem with it? Did they not notice that 48 percent of the population did not vote for him? Did they not see any television news this summer? Are they so unconscious of the country at large that NO ONE thought to rewrite before the storm erupted?

2. Obama's team is still being lapped by the Right. Any moderately intelligent low level White House hack should have seen the blow back coming. Yet, they apparently did not. Knowing that Rush L and the rest would raise holy hell about Obama making a speech to a captive audience of students is as easy as knowing the sun will rise on Tuesday. But they were STILL caught off guard. Wow. Who, I ask seriously, is running the show?

3. As is now the norm - the limp and predictable response from liberal commentators has been about race "Obama is being excoriated because he's black." Even if there is some truth in this - and there is very little - nothing in American life today loses an argument more quickly than the race card. People simply stop listening. The Left needs to stop injecting race at every opportunity. It's tired and useless. Of course, after the indefensible and creepy lesson plan - that the White house quickly scrubbed - there was little else to use except the race card.

The argument that Obama is seen as the "other" has some weight - but it has little to do with race. Obama has weakness here for one straightforward reason: He ran as everything to everybody and was not vetted. He ran from above and questions about his past were shoved aside with the ever handy race card. Digging into his past was considered the realm of nuts. We've never elected a president that so many people knew so little about. Guess what, if no one knows your particulars you will be seen as the Other. That fact is as old as human communities themselves. Large portions of his Obama's past have still not been vetted. We weren't asked to believe in Obama so much as we were commanded to assume he was A-Okay.

Had Obama been put through the ringer and still won the election it would be easier to chock some of the more strident criticism of the school speech up to white fear of black power. Because of the way the primaries were handled, and the way the stimulus was handled, and the bailouts, and the fake presidential seal, and the stunt crowds, and the Berlin speech and...and...and... there is a deep and gnawing sense among many that this man is trying to get away with something. It cannot all be written off as Right wing blather. Or fear of his dark features.