Was SNL’s mocking of Obama’s sequester hysteria a sign of change?
Or just the lowest hanging fruit of the week?
This past week, SNL mocked Obama’s fear-mongering over the sequester.
But SNL went even further, mocking Obama’s economic ignorance, having his character say: “I really have no idea how money works or how budgets work.” (h/t NRO)
This attitude, while a joke here, reflects an incident during the 2011 budget negotiations reported by Bob Woodward.
Reid began to lay out the two-step $2.7 -trillion debt limit extension, then stopped. He was not a details guy. “Well, let David just tell you what it is,” he said.
It was highly unusual for someone to pass the ball so completely to a staffer. The 44-year-old Krone outlined the plan, including a secret Republican pledge to count $1 trillion in savings from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan toward deficit reduction. That was surprising. Earlier, Boehner had not been willing to accept this accounting gimmick.
“I don’t trust these guys,” the president said dismissively.
Krone either would not or could not conceal his anger.
“Wait a second,” Obama said, interrupting someone else who was about to speak. “I can tell David has something else to say.”
“Mr. President, I am sorry — with all due respect — that we are in this situation that we’re in, but we got handed this football on Friday night. And I didn’t create this situation. The first thing that baffles me is, from my private-sector experience, the first rule that I’ve always been taught is to have a Plan B. And it is really disheartening that you, that this White House did not have a Plan B.”
Several jaws dropped as the Hill staffer blasted the president to his face.
Ed Morrissey commented:
This administration has never had a Plan B. Obama has never run any organization of consequence, certainly not any in the private sector, where executives have to constantly adapt to changing conditions and prepare backup strategies in case projects fail. Obama comes from Academia, where all of his policies work in theory, and so failure means insisting on sticking with the failed policies because they’ll eventually work.
That’s why Obama won’t produce a second-term agenda. It’s the same failed policies as his first, because Obama never has a Plan B. And that is disheartening indeed, as long as he’s in office.
I guess the good news is that if the President really supported the Simpson-Bowles recommendations, the sequester has just about forced them upon him. Marc Thiessen writes With the sequester, Obama gets his ‘balanced’ approach:
Well the “dumbness” of the sequester can easily be fixed — and it looks like Obama and Congressional Republicans are going to do that. The New York Times reports that “the president and his Republican adversaries said they would not carry the fight over the cuts into a coming legislative effort to finance the government through Sept. 30, essentially declaring a cease-fire in the budget wars that have dominated Washington since 2011.” Instead of using the threat of a government shut down on March 27 to force Republicans to replace the sequester with more spending and higher taxes, Obama has apparently agreed to sign a continuing resolution that locks in the sequester levels of spending and gives him flexibility to choose how and where to cut, so that vital programs are not adversely impacted.
What this means is that, by sticking to their guns in the sequester showdown, Republicans have actually forced Obama into the “balanced approach” he called for but did not actually pursue. We are now almost at the Simpson-Bowles 3-to-1 ratio. Unfortunately, Washington is not doing it in a way that promotes growth. The cuts come from discretionary programs, when it is entitlement spending that is driving our long-term debt and deficits. And the revenues come from raising tax rates on small businesses and the wealthy, rather than lowering tax rates, eliminating preferences and simplifying the tax code.
Still, keep in mind where Obama wanted to take the country. His original demand in the fiscal cliff negotiations last year was a $1.6 trillion tax paired with a $50 billion spending increase. Instead, a few months later, he got a $620 billion tax increase paired with a $1.72 trillion spending cut.
Republicans should be reminding everyone that they got the President to endorse the policy – a balanced approach – he advocated.
That jibes with what John Feeherty writes in The Hill (h/t Instapundit):
For those who have forgotten, Boehner agreed to a short-term debt increase — setting up the crisis to hit after the sequester went into effect and before the continuing resolution expired at the end of March.
The president took the bait by warning darkly about the apocalypse that would surely result if the government cut the growth of government spending by 5 percent. My good friend Ray LaHood, the U.S. Transportation secretary, complained about long airport lines related to the already unpopular TSA, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano warned that she would have to let illegal immigrants out of jail, and Attorney General Eric Holder assured voters that America would be less safe if government spending growth were curtailed.
And for their efforts, Team Obama was roundly mocked. “Saturday Night Live” did a hilarious skit over the weekend that had the president trot out the Village People to show how deep the cuts would hurt. When they are laughing at you, Mr. President, you aren’t winning.
John Podhoretz identifies why the President’s position was so weak:
But seriously, folks: Has there ever been a time in history when a president proposed a policy he himself thought was wrongheaded and dangerous?
The last chapter in the budget battles hasn’t been written, but it looks like President Obama figured he could get what he wanted by simply blaming the Republicans and expecting a pliant media to cover for him.
This is why so many of the President’s defenders turned on Bob Woodward.
Woodward’s reporting has been essential in exposing the President’s game.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Oh please let this be the turning point were it’s now cool to mock him.
Prez One-Note has only one song he wants sung: “Tax Me to the Moon.”
While we sing …
“How can I miss you if You Won’t Go Away”
He has Obama down pat, except for one thing, he doesn’t do the ping-pong match thing with his head, the teleprompter head-swivel.
It’s really noticeable in the YouTube montages of Obama and his speeches. Really distracting, woo. As he repeats the same ol’ phrases over and over and over and over.
Venezuela needs a new “I’m-not-a-dictator.”
Why should we expect anything out of Øbama? He is the epitome of what affirmative action has done to make the Peter Principle the norm, in both the private and public sectors. Everything he supposedly accomplished was through race preference, not ability (other than to read a teleprompter). Why else would he hide his college grades, never publish anything as HLR president, never really have done anything or merit? Seriously, with his record how else could he have won his second term? Answer: the number of people advantaged by the government, through affirmative action, welfare, freebies, you name it, is sufficient to buoy an obviously unsuccessful president.
I never watch SNL but while channel surfing waiting for Dog the Bounty Hunter I did catch that bit. And was properly surprised & amused.
“This administration has never had a Plan B. Obama has never run any organization of consequence, certainly not any in the private sector…”
That really nails it and we are now the butt of this incompetence. Yet, the dumbed down public re-elected the community organizer who obviously would be very pleased if the whole country would fall under a sum total of “failed” communities.
We are more than being in trouble…
we are ALL Detroit now.
One swallow does not make a Spring. In the case of SNL, it may well be the usual media carrion bird. Yeah, they did one sketch that did not worship Obama.
One has to wonder if someone from the White House staff did not call Lorne Michaels and tell him that he would regret broadcasting that sketch. Wait for it. If they repeat the heresy next week, and especially the week after; someone is making a crude gesture at the regime. And assuming that there is not obvious retaliation, that would mean something. Of course, for that matter, any retaliation that occurs and that we hear about has its own implications.
Waiting is.
Subotai Bahadur
If the WH threatens Lorne Michaels, will he divulge it?
Likely not, unless it leaks out accidentally. But if SNL returns to its normal adoration, one can assume at best that last week was an accident, and that things generally are not “the best” when this regime is involved.
Subotai Bahadur
Sorry, it’s low hanging fruit. But let’s hope the Great Tree (a la Nebuchadnezzar) has drooping branches so the birds and the snakes can feed.
I think the entire administration is low hanging fruit, if you ask me.
The only “Plan” that Obama consistantly has supports his desire to vote “Present” or otherwise to delay making any decision. The Simpson Bowles committee was created only because Obama wanted to delay any action to reduce the deficit. It is a good example of his voting “Present”. He ignored their recommendations because he never wanted to cut spending.
This – from the Woodward piece in Wa Po – made me laugh out loud.
“Listen, anybody who knows me knows I don’t moan, I don’t groan, I don’t whine.”
Listen, President Snivelpants – moaning, groaning and whining is all you do. And we know it.