President Obama is a Historical President...Historically Horrible

I can hardly find the words to describe what happened at the White House today. But there are always words, and so I must find them.

In an immense and nearly unparalleled – there’s always James Buchanan – abnegation of presidential responsibility, the White House today blithely acknowledged that President Obama did nothing to broker a deal in Congress to reduce the deficit and save the American economy, and it suggested it wasn’t Obama’s responsibility to do so in the future.

The deficit reduction committee represented the best chance to achieve a deficit deal, because the next opportunity will not come before February or so, when we’re in full election mode, and because any agreement reached by the panel would have had special rules attached that would have eased its passage in Congress.

But Obama, it must be clear as the Caribbean to all, is now solely interested in gaining a cudgel with which to whack Republicans next year instead of saving the union. He would rather the panel fail so that he can blame Republicans for something about the dismal economy over which he unhappily presides.

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An Historic Failure of Presidential Leadership | The Blog on Obama: White House Dossier