The problem all presidents face is that people around them don’t tell them when they are saying silly things.

Example #1, on the potential release of Guantanamo detainees:

“Can we guarantee that they’re not going to try to participate in another attack? No,” Obama said. “But what I can guarantee is that if we don’t uphold our Constitution and our values, that over time that will make us less safe. And that will be a recruitment tool for organizations like al-Qaeda.”

What? His rendition program is not a recruitment tool but holding hard-core militants at Guantanamo will be? And we can’t detain dangerous people because other terrorists will get mad? By that reasoning we shouldn’t hold any of them. (Or kill them, because that really upsets them.)

We have Example #2:

President Barack Obama says that “very modest differences” should not get in the way of swift congressional passage of a massive economic stimulus package.

That sounds like Goerge W. Bush on a bad day: out to lunch and disconnected from the news. There are huge differences over the stimulus, which is why none of the Republicans are supporting it and the public is souring on it. And the public knows there are big differences. So why sound oblivious? Well, he’s trying not to rattle the Democrats, but it sounds like he hasn’t been reading the front pages or the op-eds of major papers. Better to say, “We can always take another look and get more people on board.” Or something.

President Obama wanted to keep his blackberry to prevent being sealed in the presidential bubble. Someone needs to email him — quick! — and urge him to stop underestimating how tuned in the American people are. If he keeps this up, he’ll tax the ability of the MSM to maintain the storyline that he is the smartest, savviest, least ideological president ever.