John Podhoretz, I think, gets closest to the mark on the Obama’s Next Big Jobs Speech Kerfuffle. But even he missed one important detail.
As you know, the White House had originally planned Employment Pivot #7 — the exciting new fragrance from Chanel! — for the exact same time as Wednesday’s GOP debate. Just another case of sticking it to the opposition in a typically petty and pointless fashion.
But the debate is sponsored by Politico. It’s to be broadcast by MSNBC. These two organizations are as in the tank for this Administration as anyone. And yet, the Obama political machine thought nothing of taking viewers away from MSNBC and and readers away from Politico. Not to mention, making both of them look like idiots, sitting there in the tank while Obama pees in it.
This, at a time when the White House can’t afford to alienate any potential supporter. We’ve all seen the new jobs report by now, and it’s miserable. Just when the President needs most to be putting together a bold plan — stimuli and green jobs retreads do not count as “bold” — he’s instead caught in a pissing match with the entire GOP field and his most ardent supporters in the press.
Speaking of retreads, Obama’s newest new chief economic advisor is the big brain behind Cash for Clunkers, which did nothing but increase prices of used cars for poorer buyers while subsidizing new car purchases by wealthier buyers. He’s the guy who thinks TARP was just dandy and that boosting minimum wages increases employment. Alan Krueger is just another New Deal Lite suit in a White House full of them. Yet Krueger’s fingerprints will be all over the President’s jobs speech, which will now be read on Thursday night, in the all-too-familiar Prompter Ping-Pong fashion.
What kind of message his appointment send to the business community? Let me take a stab at that one.
Message: I don’t care about jobs.
Rather, Obama does care about jobs — but not more than he cares about big government progressivism and paying off favored Democratic constituencies with borrowed money. Jobs come in a distant third place after those. Fourth, if you include pricy vacations on exclusive islands.
Politico will, I’m sure, keep doing puff pieces on the White House and hit pieces on the GOP candidates. MSNBC will keep doing… whatever the hell it is MSNBC does. They can’t help it — their thinking is too much in line with Obama’s. But like most everybody else who were once caught up in the torrid romance of hopenchange, for them the honeymoon is now over.
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