Bin Laden Anniversary: Is Obama Gloating?

With the May 1 anniversary of Osama bin Laden's killing upon us, the White House is going to great lengths to remind everyone all about it. For starters, there's Joe Biden's new stock phrase: "Bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive." Then there's the ad suggesting that Mitt Romney wouldn't have had the guts to approve the raid. And it culminates with an interview of President Obama by NBC's Brian Williams that airs next week from the White House Situation Room, notes Politico. That's where the now-iconic photo was taken of top officials watching the raid.

"Few presidents have talked about the killing of an individual enemy in such an expansive way," says the New York Times in a story today about the strategy. It could be a risky one. BuzzFeed, for instance, has John McCain's withering attack on the president, which begins, "Shame on Barack Obama for diminishing the memory of September 11th and the killing of Osama bin Laden by turning it into a cheap political attack ad." (ABC already pointed out that Obama accused Hillary Clinton of doing much the same in 2008.) And Daniel Halper at the conservative Weekly Standard calls out Obama for "spiking the football," turning the president's own words against him. The anniversary should be a prime topic on tomorrow's talk shows. (More Osama bin Laden stories.)