School tour hostages? Obama jumps the shark

Posted by hpayne on March 8, 2013

“He’s jumped the shark in Iraq,” said a Democrat friend 10 years ago of George Bush’s Iraq invasion. It stuck with me – not just because it was the first time I had heard the phrase, but also because my friend was ultimately right. At the pinnacle of his post-Afghanistan invasion power, Bush’s strained campaign to take us into war in Iraq was overreach. And his undoing.

Barack Obama jumped the shark this week with the sequester.

In all his post-election arrogance and glory, the president played his sequester card too long. He predicted the apocalypse. And when it didn’t happen, he shut schoolchildren out of White House tours. He “jumped the sequester” in Wall Street Journal Kim Strassel’s (one of the best journalists in D.C. – who thought Paul Gigot could be followed by someone of equal talent?) memorable phrase.

“The act was designed to spark outrage against Republicans, yet the sheer pettiness of it instead provided a moment of clarity,” writes Strassel. “Americans might not understand the technicalities of sequester, but this was something else entirely. Was the president actually claiming there was not a single other government item—not one—that could be cut instead of the White House tours?”

Most of the D.C. media – and their late night heroes Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert – were too mesmerized by Rand Paul’s 13-hour drone filibuster sideshow (Obamadrones are going to attack Arab-Americans in Dearborn cafeterias! Seriously, Mr. Paul?) to notice at first. But then a sixth-grade class posted a Facebook video pleading with the president to let them have their tour.

The White House did what? Were they really so heartless as to use kids as hostages in a political battle? They weren’t going to let them tour the people’s house?

By Jay Carney’s press conference Thursday, reporters were peppering the White House spokesman with when-are-you-going-to-stop-beating-the-kids questions.

President Obama, knee deep in polling data showing his disapproval plummeting, already knew the sequester gambit had backfired. After not meeting with Republican leaders since New Years until the day of the sequester deadline, he suddenly scheduled meetings with Republicans for dinner Wednesday and lunch Thursday to try and change the narrative. “In that moment, I think, a lot of Republicans realized that the ground had shifted in this debate. The president overplayed his hand, and he knows it,” a Senate aide told the Washington Examiner’s Byron York.

In this White House, the end is always politics (POTUS hasn’t put up a serious budget in four years), so the bipartisan window-dressing is temporary (the day of the GOP dinner, I got a mass email from Obama operative Stephanie Cutter telling me “$43 million for food programs for seniors” had been cut because Republicans “wouldn’t support closing tax loopholes for millionaires and billionaires — for things like yachts and corporate jets.”). But it’s a sign that something has changed.

The president jumped the shark.

 

Comments are closed.