Okay, so you are the President of the United States. What’s on your plate today? The dire economy. Slowing down foreclosures. Getting Americans back to work. Bailing out huge institutions or letting them crumble. The Middle East. Cuba. Closing down Guantanamo while Dick “Sour Grapes” Cheney holds press conferences deriding your decisions. Traveling the globe trying to restore the global view of America as a world power with some moral fiber, and relighting the flame under the cooling pot of controlling nuclear proliferation. Rescuing Americans from pirates with deadly force (what the–!!!?). Healthcare. Education. Ecology. Winding up one war and focusing on another. And all of them on the front burner. What a smorgasbord–which delicious morsel will you choose first?
On the back burner has been the much-anticipated “photo-op” subject of a puppy for the First Family’s daughters. One of them has allergies, narrowing down the breeds from which they can choose. In the months leading to his inauguration, the President Elect was open enough to mention the impending puppy search, and to express the hope that the family would be able to adopt a dog from a shelter. Unfortunately, the breed they had researched and hoped for–a Portuguese Water Dog–was not your everyday stray.
But then: a gift. From a terminally-ill, very senior senator who has not only devoted his own life to the service of his country, but lost two brothers–a sitting President and a campaigning Presidential candidate–to assassination, and another to World War II; and who has for decades publicly espoused many of the very same values, issues and positions that brought Barack Obama to office; a kindred spirit. It just so happens that this iconic elder statesman himself has this unusual breed of dog, knows its traits well, and enthusiastically endorses its selection by offering a puppy to the First Family.
Should the President have refused to have taken Senator Kennedy’s call? Should the family have thrown the pet back in his face? Is it unreasonable to think that continuing to drag out the timeframe the Obamas had promised their daughters for the adoption of a puppy, would have already seemed like an eternity to these little girls, and that once they got within reach of having their arms filled with a face-licking, wiggling puppy, it would be love at first opportunity?
As an aside, what might have been this puppy’s fate if it was not accepted? Might it have gone to a pet store, into conditions that so many rescue groups publicly decry? If not sold, might it not then have gone either to a shelter or a rescue group for placement? It was still an animal in need of a home. Should the adoption have been done “the Washington way”–with the dog going through the motions of being “given” to a shelter first, allowing for better publicity when the Obamas claimed it?
I am generally pretty staunchly on the side of animal-rights groups, and am a supporter of a local rescue group. But for animal-rights groups to view the family’s adoption of this particular puppy as some kind of policy statement undercutting the needs of animals in shelters and to seek adverse press against Obama as a “PROMISE BREAKER” is embarrassing in its pettiness and underscores our need to step back from the “Hollywood celebrity” status of our voyeuristic intrusion into the genuine family life of the First Family, to which they should be entitled, and allow the President to focus on official business.
Like any other family, they selected a breed of dog that met their special needs. Like any other parents, when no corresponding pet became available from a shelter within the timeframe they had promised their children, their priority became to fulfill their promise to their children. Should they be punished because they were gifted with just the pet they were seeking?
If the President requests corn flakes for breakfast tomorrow morning, but changes his mind at the last minute and has Wheaties, should the National Corn Growers’ Association hire a lobbyist and call a press conference? Only in America.
04.15.09
