Rejecting Obama: The Mister Rogers Effect

My most recent article in Parents magazine just came out!  Please read, share, and “like” the post over there on Parents!  It begins:

Call it the Mister Rogers Effect: Moms want their kids to grow up in a neighborhood where the adults are virtuous.  Whether it’s the baker, the postman, the mayor, or even the President, we want our children to have role models who are kind, generous, truthful.  The kind of people your children could safely emulate.

During the most recent debate, some of us sat down with our children to see President Barack Obama and his challenger Mitt Romney discuss foreign policy.  They disagreed on many things, particularly on Romney’s auto bailout position. For a few uncomfortable minutes, one accused the other of lying, until Romney suggested people at home should simply look it up.  They did.  For the days following the debate, Romney’s 2008 editorial about how he’d handle the Detroit automakers was the most-read story on the NYT’s website.  So, who was telling the truth?  Romney was deemed more accurate, but his success in this particular exchange is hardly earth shattering.  What is significant is that voters, rather Americans, are realizing the President is not who we hoped he was.

“Here’s what upset me last night, this playing fast and loose with facts,” David Letterman said on his show.  “Now, I don’t care whether you’re Republican or Democrat, you want your president to be telling the truth… And so when we found out today or soon thereafter that, in fact, President Obama was not telling the truth about what was excerpted from that op-ed piece, I felt discouraged.”

Of course, “discouraged” is a far cry from the sunny optimism that at one time characterized Americans.

Please read the entire article about the “Mister Rogers Effect” here!