{"id":3388,"date":"2013-08-28T02:22:16","date_gmt":"2013-08-28T02:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/?p=3388"},"modified":"2013-08-28T02:22:16","modified_gmt":"2013-08-28T02:22:16","slug":"why-doesnt-potus-come-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=3388","title":{"rendered":"Why doesn&#8217;t POTUS come here?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>A headline in the National Journal online edition asks: Why won&#8217;t Obama visit North Dakota?<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a valid question, given the oil boom that&#8217;s changing North Dakota and beginning to change the nation&#8217;s energy strategy.<\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/www.nationaljournal.com\/energy\/why-won-t-obama-visit-north-dakota-20130825<\/p>\n<p>But I can answer the question posed by the headline and the article written by the Journal&#8217;s Amy Harder. He won&#8217;t go there for the same reason he doesn&#8217;t come to West Texas. There&#8217;s no political advantage for the president.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s more, West Texas is resuming its own energy boom, in the Permian Basin, not to mention the growth of the wind-energy industry throughout the Panhandle.<\/p>\n<p>Presidents, though, are the supreme political animals. Democratic presidents quite often don&#8217;t bother coming to regions of the country where they lack popular support. That would be, um, West Texas and North Dakota.<\/p>\n<p>Conversely, do Republican presidents spend a lot of time visiting places such as, say, the Bay Area of California, or Boston, or the Pacific Northwest? Hardly.<\/p>\n<p>Frankly, I think quite a few West Texans &#8212; not to mention North Dakotans &#8212; would appreciate a presidential visit to talk up the industries that are fueling our manufacturing might and keeping our vehicles on the road.<\/p>\n<p>And I also believe a Democratic president could get a warm welcome here. Do you remember the reception another very high-profile Democrat &#8212; one William Jefferson Clinton &#8212; got when he came to Amarillo in 2008 to campaign for his wife, then-U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, as she sought the Democratic Party presidential nomination? The Civic Center&#8217;s Grand Plaza Ballroom was packed beyond capacity.<\/p>\n<p>The nation&#8217;s energy future is, indeed, changing, as the National Journal article points out.<\/p>\n<p>A presidential visit would be a welcome event to call attention to the hard work that&#8217;s under way out here in Flyover Country.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A headline in the National Journal online edition asks: Why won&#8217;t Obama visit North Dakota? It&#8217;s a valid question, given the oil boom that&#8217;s changing North Dakota and beginning to change the nation&#8217;s energy strategy. http:\/\/www.nationaljournal.com\/energy\/why-won-t-obama-visit-north-dakota-20130825 But I can answer the question posed by the headline and the article written by the Journal&#8217;s Amy Harder. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=3388\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Why doesn&#8217;t POTUS come here?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[57,293,540,631,1585,2139,3334,4668,5272],"class_list":["post-3388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2008-campaign","tag-amarillo-civic-center","tag-barack-obama","tag-bill-clinton","tag-energy-boom","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-north-dakota","tag-texas-panhandle","tag-wind-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3388\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}