Why would President Obama inject politics into the potential swine flu pandemic?

Before President Obama spoke this morning, I thought the Administration’s handling of the swine-flu outbreak was impressive. Yesterday’s press briefing at the White House was notable for its first-rate timing, depth and clarity –- everything Obama’s statement on the swine flu at the National Academy of Sciences today was not.

Today, Obama said the potential for a pandemic is “obviously a cause for concern and requires heightened state of alert, but it’s not a cause for alarm.” What does that mean? What’s the difference between concerns, alerts and alarms? This is the sort of vague statement that has the potential to produce all three. (And is exactly the sort of poor communicating I referenced in my POLITICO column about Obama myths.)

Rather than speaking in generalities, professional public-health communicators would urge Obama to offer specifics in terms of the scope of the outbreak and educate the public about what to do — just as the government officials did yesterday.

But more concerning was Obama’s political opportunism. After promising that the government was doing all that it could to stop the disease’s spread (again citing no specifics), Obama went on to plug his agenda and lay the groundwork for casting blame in the event we cannot stop the disease:

“This is one more example of why we cannot allow our nation to fall behind. At such a difficult moment, there are those who say we cannot afford to invest in science, that support for research is somehow a luxury at moments defined by necessities. I fundamentally disagree.”

This is the sort of disingenuous straw man argument that Obama loves to employ. As far as I know, nobody is suggesting that the Federal government should not apply all necessary resources to preventing pandemics. In fact, the Bush Administration devoted meaningful resources to the effort during the SARS outbreak, which is part of the reason why Obama’s team is able to have reassuring press conferences like yesterday’s.

Obama’s political opportunism today was enough to cause flu-like symptoms in anyone believing he’s a post-political leader.

Watch Obama’s full statement posted below:

Tags: communications, disaster, obama, pandemic, White House