As I report this morning, the GOP wants to remind voters that Barack Obama likes fancy salad greens, with a website that asks surfers to guess whether certain quotes were said by him or a parade of starlets and movie actors.
On the same website, the party that said John Kerry "looks french" and poked fun at his decision to order swiss cheese on a Philadelphia cheese steak, notes that Obama does not know much about truck parts.
The page cites a September, 2007 GQ piece in which reporter Ryan Lizza describes Obama's puzzlement with the trailer equipment at the back of a pickup truck:
As Obama stood at the counter paying, he looked quizzically at a display of trailer-hitch covers dressed in the guise of moose and turkeys. Turning to the phalanx of cameramen and reporters, Obama bravely wondered, "Who knows what a hitch ball is? This is a hitch-ball cover. We don't know what a hitch ball is. Anybody know?" A cameraman politely explained that it's the silver thing on the back of a truck used to tow a trailer. "Oh, I see," Obama said, looking as if he was doing a mental calculation about whether this was one of those moments the press would use to make it seem like he's out of touch. It wasn't exactly President George H. W. Bush marveling over a checkout scanner, but still.
I'm certain the next president of the United States will not be called upon to haul cargo, and the US constitution does not list truck maintenance among the duties enumerated to the president. The aim, as Lizza anticipates, is to portray Obama as out of touch with ordinary Americans, or at least those who drive trucks.
