On Presidents, Puppies & Promises
This blog is, at least nominally, about contracts. The Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 1 defines a contract as “a promise or set of promises for the breach of which the law gives a remedy, or the performance of which the law in some way recognizes as a duty.” So, really, this is a blog about promises.
Our President-elect Barack Obama made plenty of promises on the campaign trail. But there’s one promise, in particular, I’ll be watching to see him fulfill: the puppy. Obama promised his daughters that, whether or not he won, they’d get a puppy when the election was over. And, he even mentioned the puppy last night in his speech in Chicago: “Sasha and Malia I love you both more than you can imagine. And you have earned the new puppy that’s coming with us to the new White House.”
It may make his daughters very happy, but the puppy was also absolutely necessary for Obama’s presidential image. What president in recent memory has not owned a dog? Millie Bush even co-authored a book. Seriously, what kind of legacy does a president leave if he has no artifacts for the Presidential Pet Museum?
And, no matter your political leanings, you have to admit the warm feeling you get when you conjure the image of the picturesque Obama family with a puppy. It pulls at your heartstrings.
Puppies have that effect. In a New Yorker piece earlier this year, Author David Sedaris, writing on the topic of the tsunami in Southeast Asia, opined:
I’ll wager that quite a few sun visors found their way to Southeast Asia after the tsunami. One brutal news story after another, and it went on for weeks. The phone numbers of aid organizations would skitter across the bottom of the TV screen, and I recall thinking that if they wanted serious donations they ought to show a puppy. People I know, people who had never before contributed to charity, emptied their pockets when a cocker spaniel was shown standing on a rooftop after Hurricane Katrina hit, eight months later. “What choice did I have?” they asked. “That poor little thing looked into the camera and penetrated my very soul.”
The eyes of the stranded grandmother, I noted, were not half as piercing. There she was, clinging to a chimney with her bra strap showing, and all anyone did was wonder if she had a dog. “I’d hate to think there’s a Scotty in her house, maybe trapped on the first floor. What’s the number of that canine-rescue agency?”
Really, whether red or blue at heart, who doesn’t like puppies?
(Pictured above, Fala. FDR’s dog).
[Meredith R. Miller]