The Longest Wind

Good Lord. Can it be that long since President Obama first showed his arse to the world in a D-Day speech?

He's still fumbling for his Commander-in-Chief britches,  but in all fairness he has improved since the rhetorical embarrassment he uttered five years ago today when he proclaimed that the Normandy invasion was launched by generals who planned to fail.

Today's 2014 edition is less laughable, pretty good, in fact for His Ineptness. If you want to think he ordered his speech writers to study up on Peggy Noonan's  the boys of Pointe du Hoc gem I won't argue with you.

On the other hand, he forgot to remind his staff that maybe they might want to think about consulting someone who is at least casually acquainted with the summer of '44.

By the end of that longest day, this beach had been fought, lost, refought and won -- a piece of Europe once again liberated and free. Hitler's Wall was breached, letting loose Patton's Army to pour into France.

All I can figure is that his pollster told him Patton is a supremely recognizable name while Omar Bradley is  by now a whoduhhellizzat?  I mean,  George even had a movie made about him, and it is still getting decent numbers on teevee reruns.

On D-Day, Patton was giving speeches in England and commanding a ghost army of rubber tanks and plywood trucks to fool Nazis into believing in a main attack later across the Dover Straits. He was quietly training his real army -- the Third -- which went operational more than a month later, long after the first Normandy beach breakouts.

The point isn't Patton. It is a president who commands resources vast enough to inform him -- assuming he gives a damn --  that, among the Americans, Bradley and his First Army carried the load for weeks beyond "The Longest Day." It's basic stuff.

But maybe it is important only to old cranks who cling bitterly to the notion that when presidents speak their stuff gets written down in books and, therefore, the lower the nonsense quotient the better.

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And then he read off his Teleprompter:

To the East, the British tore through the coast, fueled by the fury of five years of bombs over London, and a solemn vow to "fight them on the beaches." 

Just for the record, the quote is from Churchill in 1940 and had nothing to do with Overlord. Winston was rallying the home army -- and the home folks with shotguns and cricket bats -- to hold fast on the beaches of Britain.

Oh well. What difference does it make, anyway?