I can’t fully describe how bad Obama was just now.
He presented absolutely zero spending cuts. Jake Tapper from ABC News asked him for some, and Obama mucked it. Couldn’t offer a single example of what he’s put on the table.
This was an accusation made last night by John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan – namely, that negotiating with Obama is impossible because he won’t commit to anything. Everybody knows that spending has to be cut – not the baselines, the actual spending that’s going on right now. Obama refuses to agree to any cuts, period.
And he actually had the gall to blame this on Bush. Look, Bush spent too much money. We all know that, and it’s one reason why The Bush GOP lost the support of fiscal conservatives and with it the elections of 2006 and 2008 (Bush wasn’t involved in the 2008 elections, but they happened largely because the party’s base was disillusioned thanks to his presidency).
But the idea that Bush caused all these deficit problems is a bald-faced lie. Bush never ran deficits of this size. We’re spending so much more money now than we did when Bush was president – even after Nancy Pelosi got the House Speakership and spending exploded even before Bush was gone – that it’s not even funny. And the majority of the spending increases are Obama’s. He’s increased non-defense discretionary spending by EIGHTY-FOUR PERCENT as president. The idea that he can escape accountability for that is mind-boggling.
Except it’s not. Other than Tapper, and MAYBE Chuck Todd, nobody in that White House press corps challenged any part of this idiotic spectacle. Obama was asked question after question about the mean Republicans and their intransigence; this was basically a campaign event rather than a press conference.
Yesterday I was at a luncheon with somebody who had to deal with Obama while the BP spill was going on, and there was a strong impression given that this guy had no idea how to do anything of value in handling that spill. All he cared about was how things would look in the media; as though his complete attention was on how to win today’s news cycle rather than actually solving problems.
Today’s press conference was a crystalline example of this. Obama has no interest or engagement in the budget crisis. Or any other problem of note. He won’t do the work and he doesn’t know how. It’s not that he’s a socialist, though he certainly is one, it’s that he’s simply not qualified to deal with matters of substance because he’s never run anything.
We’re like an old European country with a boy king. You can’t go to the throne to get anything done, because you’re basically asking a stupid, spoiled kid to make a good decision. That’s not gonna happen, so you’re dependent on the underlings to do something.
And we’re in even more trouble than we know, because the underlings are just as bad as the boy king is. Joe Biden isn’t qualified to handle anything of substance. You wouldn’t want Valerie Jarrett in charge of major national issues unless you had a death wish for this country. And so on.
If you watched this press conference and didn’t come away from it with abject fear for the future of our country, you’re just not paying attention. Our noses are wide open.
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