The Event

I've been watching the television show The Event and last night realized the resemblance of The President in the series to President Obama.

The show, subtitled "What will you beLIEve?" could be science fiction as it has people from another planet or place and they have knowledge/power beyond what mere humans have, but really is more of a mild drama. There are no phasers or funny weapons. And they don't bend the laws of science very much.

The President in the series is played by Blair Underwood, a light skinned, good looking African-American. He was elected two years ago and according to his bio is "Moral and idealistic. Hugely popular with the American people and around the world, (he) wants to be a new kind of President, working toward a new America. He's committed to honesty ..." Like our real president, the president in this series is not fully, African-American, he was "born to Cuban refugees in Miami, Florida" and "is very proud of his Afro-Cuban roots. He is a graduate of Yale University."

But last night while watching an episode on my DVR, I noticed a deeper similarity, something in the character of the man that matches President Obama. In the episode, a man who tried to kill the president had been captured and was about to be interrogated. The President demanded that he be allowed to question the individual and that he could get answers. I'd seen it before in the series (although I can't remember the scenes), places where the President got involved in order to handle some seemingly small issue, not letting the experts do their job. The President thinks he can fix anything. He believes that he is Interrogator in Charge, Chief Fence Mender and Overall Head Honcho.

We've seen this in real life, with the mishandling of the Shirley Sherrod case, getting involved before he knew all of the facts. It can be seen in the  Henry Gates case, by saying the police "acted stupidly" then having a beer summit to ease the tensions. He weighed in on the 9/11 Mosque, an issue that should have been handled by the residents and officials of New York City. And we've seen the President get involved to fix important things (like medical care) where the government has no business meddling.

Like the President on The Event, President Obama thinks it's his job to fix anything and everything that comes up

For previous posts on related to this see here and here.