Today seems like one of those days intentionally designed to sap whatever faith you might have had left in politics. You did have some remaining faith, right? Just a bit? Well hand it over, because forget jobs, forget healthcare, forget the very scary deficit monster and everything else—we'll be lucky if the members or wanna-be members of our government can even agree to meet with each other.
First we had Sarah Palin in some sort of low-intensity fight over whether Christine O'Donnell would even be allowed to be at the same Tea Party event as her, which has so far resulted in O'Donnell being invited, uninvited, re-invited, and re-uninvited. Palin has a history of canceling on people, so the final joke might be on the Tea Party, if it turns out that neither of them show up.
But that was just the appetizer: the main event was in Washington, where John Boehner apparently rejected (you can do that?) a request by President Obama to give a speech to a joint session of Congress on the first day Congress is to return from its August recess. There's also a Republican debate later that evening, and we just can't have both of those things on the same day Congress comes back to class. Now, I'm not entirely sure, but I thought that at best only two or three dozen House Republicans were going to be in that presidential debate, and I'm sure the business of Congress could go on without them, right? So I'm failing to see the problem.
As an added bonus, Boehner's office knew about Obama's planned date ahead of time, but waited until after the White House publicly announced it before they rejected it. So how many times does this make it that John Boehner has said one thing to the White House, only to very publicly say the opposite later? I'm no expert on political negotiations, but it seems at some point perhaps the administration might start thinking that this Boehner fellow might be a wee bit untrustworthy.
As an added added bonus, official Senate crank Jim DeMint (R-Whaddagot?) promised he'd block Obama's proposed date in the Senate (you can do that? Really??) because he would rather watch the Republican debate than see the President giving a speech.
So I am not sure if we're currently at 'tragedy' or have moved on to 'farce'. Yes, I suppose it was rude of Obama to want to start talking about jobs the very first day Congress returned from recess. It's like a teacher assigning homework on the first day of the school year. No fair! The first day is supposed to be easy! And I suppose it was doubly rude of Obama to want to give a speech about jobs on the same night that something good was on television, which I think right there is a perfect microcosm of just how degraded our politics have become.
Nevertheless, I remain confident that we could both have a major about jobs and have a separate GOP invitation-only slapfight on the same evening without doing major damage to either event. I remain confident that there is absolutely nothing Obama can say that will have the slightest impact on how the Republican candidates excoriate him later on in the evening; likewise, I remain confident that Congress will be able to dully not do anything about our economy no matter who speaks to them when or in what order.
On the other hand, count me among those who think there's simply nothing to be gained by giving a speech to Congress. It is a dysfunctional institution, at this point completely incompetent at addressing any problem seriously (or at all, in most cases.)
If the President wants to give a speech, he should give it to the wider public, and those members of Congress that want to hear it can record the damn thing like anyone else. You know, like the little people do.
Luckily, however, such a crisis has been averted. The White House agreed to move the speech to Thursday so it would not compete with the latest in this ongoing series of Republican debates. That puts the speech up against a football game, but I think the American people can handle that—at least, better than their members of Congress could.
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