Downside--And Difference

UPDATE: below

America elected the anti-Bush, most especially regarding verbal felicity. But the drawback of being able to speak extemporaneously is being too glib. Like Obama was today:

Obama says in his first post-election press conference that he's spoken to all the former presidents -- Carter, Bush, Clinton, as well as the current Bush -- and, looser than he's been in months, dares a joke at the expense of the widow of a deceased one.

"I have spoken to all of them who are living," he says. "I didn’t want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing about doing any séances," he says.

He was responding to a question, from the Chicago Sun-Times' Lynn Sweet, about whether he'd spoken to all of the "living" former presidents.

He was apparently referring to the reports in the 1980s that Nancy Reagan consulted an astrologer while in the White House. Mary Todd Lincoln, however, reportedly held actual séances. Hillary Clinton also reportedly held imaginary conversations with Eleanor Roosevelt.

Obama later said that he'd apologized to Nancy Reagan. Ms. Reagan is recovering from a broken pelvis and is sufficiently removed from "public figure" status as to warrant an exemption from being the object of inside-the-beltway sport. As Instapundit says, "You've been elected President. Try not to speak carelessly if you can help it."

Still, I detect signs of the much-hoped-for "change"--the press would have pronounced similar carelessness by Bush proof of Presidential stupidity.

MORE:

From the November 9th New York Times:

If our next president seems flip or overconfident, observers will be skeptical above all else.

So it's officially ok to be skeptical.