JAMES TARANTO: The Politics of Contempt: Obama pivots for the 973rd time.

When somebody feels the need to describe his feelings as genuine, it’s a safe bet that they’re actually insincere. The alternative would be to assume that he is admitting to habitual insincerity–saying, in effect: Unlike all my other pronouncements, this one is genuine. But that poses a liar’s-paradox problem: A candid acknowledgment that one is habitually insincere would be inconsistent with the underlying reality of habitual insincerity.

Thus pure logic dictates that the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent was merely posturing when he tweeted this morning that he was “genuinely sad to see supposedly neutral news orgs mocking the idea of a ‘pivot’ to jobs.”

Actually, our (admittedly cursory) search turned up only one such org, ABC News, whose website yesterday featured the headline “Obama Pivots to Economy . . . Again.” If that seems sarcastic, it is only very mildly so, given that reporter Mary Bruce thoroughly documents the president’s perseveration.

Plus:

Also, which scandals exactly are “phony”? The biggest scandal is the one that raises serious questions about the legitimacy of Obama’s re-election. Here is what President Asterisk himself had to say on the subject way back on May 13: “If you’ve got the IRS operating in anything less than a neutral and non-partisan way, then that is outrageous, it is contrary to our traditions. And people have to be held accountable, and it’s got to be fixed. . . . I’ve got no patience with it. I will not tolerate it.”

We’re sure his outrage over the phony scandal was genuine.

Ouch. And: “On the other hand, Obama’s certitude about his own superiority, his utter contempt for his political adversaries, even for those whose priorities differ from his–now that’s genuine. It is the central feature of his political character, and the proximate cause of–pardon the cliché–Washington’s current ‘dysfunction.'”