The Awesome Obama (TAO) addressed the nation from George Washington University in DC on Wednesday, ostensibly to deliver his administration's budget counterproposal to Paul Ryan's plan. I didn't listen and I bet you didn't either.
Reactions from known partisans have mostly been predictable. Just read through the titles and authors at the morning-after RealClearPolitics.com. Generally, pundits on the right point out that TAO used the occasion for a partisan attack to obfuscate the complete absence of a plan, while the leftist writers display tingly-leg enthusiasm for the voice of reason and judgement's descent from Olympian heights into the pit as bare-knuckled brawler. Of course, those descriptions are not inconsistent....
However, there is criticism from the left for his failure to get serious and deliver a plan. Clive Crook, senior editor of The Atlantic, paragon of liberal thinking, says just that in very pointed terms. Ruth Marcus of the WaPo gives TAO a no-plan whacking and then decries his political ineptitude.
Upon a moment's reflection, it seems possible, perhaps even likely, that TAO and his advisers have chosen this alternative as the best of the bad lot they face. To push a progressivist agenda now would engage even more centrists than those who today stand in the pit beside the gangs of the right between the progressivists and their goals.
However, it is possible that TAO's White House is as inept as that of the 39th President, James "My Name is" Earl Carter, a possibility that would surely continue to delight us as the days to November 6, 2012 count down.
