Obama 'out-foxed' right on schools speech

Despite all the brouhaha preceding President Obama’s speech to students, Obama managed to deliver a speech long on feel-good themes and short on the controversy that critics had anticipated, Thom Serafin, President and CEO of Serafin & Associates, Inc., says during this appearance on Fox News Chicago.

“The White House kind of out-foxed the conservative pundits on the other side who were complaining about what they might do, what they may not do,” Serafin says.

The White House was smart enough to take the president’s speech in this direction, causing the barrage of rhetorical grenades lobbed in advance of the speech to fall inert, Serafin says.

“The president is going to tell the children this morning, ‘If you’re quitting on your education, you’re quitting on your country. Wash your hands. Make sure you don’t go to school if you’re sick. Don’t get other people sick in your school,’” Serafin says, referring to pre-released text of the president’s speech. “Those are wonderful messages, that’s God, apple pie and country.”

In this appearance, Serafin also discuses the resignation of Van Jones, Obama’s environmental czar, amid reports that Jones made inflammatory remarks about Republicans and joined a petition questioning whether the federal government had a role in permitting the Sept. 11 attacks.

While he is distinguished on environmental matters, Serafin says that Jones “is off the center on some of these other issues.”

“Communism went out with the Brady Bunch,” Serafin says. “It’s been a long time since we look at communism as an attractive alternative.”

Also in this appearance on Fox, Serafin discusses the evolving political dynamics of the war in Afghanistan.