HOGGING THE SPOTLIGHT – AT 9:18 A.M. ET:  President Obama, who assures us that he's a grownup, as compared with everyone else in town, sometimes acts like a spoiled child.  Today he'll be at Cape Canaveral to observe the second to last launch of a space shuttle. 

Why this, and why not the last launch?  Well, Gabrielle Giffords, still recovering from a grievous gunshot wound to the head, will be there to watch her husband, the shuttle's commander, fly into space.  You'd think the president would give Giffords this day alone, but I guess he couldn't resist the chance to share the spotlight with the sympathetic congresswoman.  The Politico reports: 

President Barack Obama told Floridians more than a year ago that no one was more committed to human space flight than he, an aficionado who appreciates Tang orange drink, Sputnik references and the program’s place in the American imagination.

But Florida still feels a bit lost in his orbit.

Obama returns to the state Friday, where the principal storyline will be his attendance alongside Rep. Gabriel Giffords (D-Ariz.) at the emotional launch of a space shuttle mission led by her husband — her first public event since suffering gun shot wounds to the head.

Yet Obama has a parallel purpose — to ease the political damage of job losses in the space industry and reaffirm his commitment to space exploration, which looms large in a high-unemployment battleground state that looks to the skies for its future, self-image and economic well-being.

Obama sparked a political backlash last year with a fundamental reordering of NASA. He sought to scrap a planned return to the moon and turn to private companies and foreign nations to transport astronauts to the International Space Station. The proposal left the industry feeling uncertain about its future, despite his efforts to protect the agency’s funding and plot a new course to put astronauts on an asteroid and Mars within 25 years.

Depending on foreign nations to ferry astronauts does not sit well with Americans.  We have dominated space exploration, and Americans like to be leaders.  Someone tell the White House.

Not only that, his trip follows the loss of a promised $40 million grant to help laid-off shuttle workers find new jobs, a casualty of the recent federal budget deal between the White House and Congress. Two weeks ago, NASA’s prime shuttle contractor announced another 2,000 layoffs as the agency winds down the 30-year-old program.

Why is it that this president takes aim at every area of American pride?  A journalist said this week in a New Yorker piece that Obama's approach can be called "leading from behind."  Yeah, I'm afraid that's right.  And staying behind.

Reagan told us it was always morning in America.  Obama wonders whether that's a good thing.  And that's the difference between a great president and a political misfit.

April 29, 2011