Bam Bites Dog

The political perils of personal attacks.

By JAMES TARANTO

One time Barack Obama went to an Indian restaurant and ordered the lassi. Was he ever disappointed when the waiter brought him a yogurt drink!

We’ll be here all week. But seriously, folks, we have a man-bites-dog story for you today.

First, some background. Last week Byron York of the Washington Examiner reported that “some Obama staffers are reportedly obsessing over a nearly 30-year-old story about [Mitt] Romney’s dog”:

In 1983, Romney took his family on vacation and, faced with a packed station wagon, put his Irish setter Seamus in a travel kennel strapped to the roof of the car. Romney constructed a special windshield in an effort to make the dog more comfortable, but Seamus ended up relieving himself on the roof, which reportedly caused much consternation among the Romney boys. Ever since the story got out–it was reported by the Boston Globe in 2007, during Romney’s first run for president–Romney opponents have used it in semiserious and sometimes fully serious ways to portray him as insensitive.

“I have heard, in focus groups, the dog story totally tanks Mitt Romney’s approval rating,” Chris Hayes said on his MSNBC show. The Washington Post reported last month that the Seamus story “is ballooning into a narrative of epic proportions”:

Late-night host David Letterman has been giving the dog near-nightly shout-outs. There are parody Web videos, “Dogs Aren’t Luggage” T-shirts and Facebook groups. (“Dogs Against Romney,” which protested outside last month’s Westminster dog show, has more than 38,000 Facebook fans.) The New Yorker featured a cartoon, with Rick Santorum riding in Romney’s rooftop dog carrier, on its cover last week. In the five years since the story was revealed, New York Times columnist Gail Collins has mentioned Seamus in at least 50 columns.

In January Obama adviser David Axelrod–not to be confused with Axelrod, the Flying A Dog–blew a dog whistle. He tweeted a photo of the president with Bo, the White House canine, in what appears to be the back seat of a limousine. Axelrod’s comment: “How loving owners transport their dogs.”

In a more serious vein, Lincoln Mitchell of Columbia University’s Harriman Institute writes at the Puffington Host: “For many voters, treating a dog this way is unimaginable and could only be done by somebody who has a problem empathizing with others.”

But then Jim Treacher, the Daily Caller’s resident wag, picked up his dog-eared copy of “Dreams From My Father,” Obama’s 1995 autobiography, and sniffed out this passage from the second chapter. If Axelrod’s tweet was a dog whistle, Treacher’s post is a dinner bell:

With Lolo [Obama’s stepfather], I learned how to eat small green chill peppers raw with dinner (plenty of rice), and, away from the dinner table, I was introduced to dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy). Like many Indonesians, Lolo followed a brand of Islam that could make room for the remnants of more ancient animist and Hindu faiths. He explained that a man took on the powers of whatever he ate: One day soon, he promised, he would bring home a piece of tiger meat for us to share.

It reminds us of the conclusion of the sci-fi tale “A Boy and His Dog”: “It’s a cookbook.”

The jokes write themselves.

Twitter.com

#ObamaDogRecipes: Yorkshire terrier pudding, mutt chop, Pekingese duck, bichon frisee salad, beagle with cream cheese, pure bread.

“So, Mr. President, where shall we go to eat?” “I know a great Spot.”

If you want a friend in Washington, don’t eat him (credit to Jim Geraghty).

Happiness is a warm puppy, with a side of fries.

Obama’s favorite fast-food joint? Checkers (Patrick Daly).

I wouldn’t vote for that guy for dogcatcher.

Did you hear about the insomniac polyphagiac president? He lies awake at night wondering if there is a dog.

Romney aide Erich Fehrnstrom got into the act last night, retweeting Axelrod’s Obama-Bo snapshot from January with the comment: “In retrospect, a chilling photo.” That may be the wrong adjective, since it doesn’t appear to have been taken in a refrigerated truck. Obama really spoils that dog.

Almost as funny as the jokes at Obama’s expense have been the discomfited responses of Obama supporters who’ve been dining out for months on the Seamus story. “Had only just noticed new rightwing Obama is weirdo Muslim dog eater meme. Thk you twitter,” tweeted TalkingPointsMemo’s Josh Marshall last night. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Marshall that as dogs are haram, this should put to rest the Muslim rumors.