Obama On Jobs vs. GOP Debate

01 September 2011 |permalink | email article

As Talking Points Memo put it America is concerned about jobs while the national press corps cares about the 2012 presidential race. So which topic will draw the bigger audience?

President Obama on Wednesday called for a joint session of Congress on Sept. 7 to make his long expected jobs speech to lawmakers and the nation. But that schedule put the president’s address in direct conflict with the first of three Republican debates set for September, the first being on Sept .7, the same date, at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Southern California’s Simi Valley – and the first since Rick Perry joined the race. Hosted by NBC News and Politico it will be broadcast live on MSNBC. John Harris, Politico’s editor-in-chief and co-moderator, said in many ways it becomes the first general election debate of the 2012 cycle. Late last night the president agreed to reschedule the joint session until Thursday evening.

But polling clearly suggests that Americans would rather hear about jobs than presidential politics. Early last month a CNN poll found that 60 percent said the economy was their first priority. On the other side, nearly 45 percent of GOP voters aren’t even paying attention to their own primary process, according to the latest AP poll. Obama’s address and the Reagan debate will be rebroadcast again later in the evening. So the kerfluffle is really much adieu about nothing.

My Two-Cents Plain

The country spends nearly four billion dollars a month in Afghanistan, which adds up to about 48 billion annually. The cost of Hurricane Irene is estimated to cost $7 billion to $10 billion. So when Republican House Leader Eric Canter, whose Virginia district was the epicenter of an earthquake before being hit by Irene, says additional money for cash-strapped FEMA must be offset by spending cuts somewhere else you have to question his obsession with deficits.  N.J. Gov. Chris Christie got it right: “Protecting the safety of our citizens is one of the bedrock rules of government.”

What they said

Proving once again that he is truly delusional, Vice praised President Bush in the wake of Katrina for “reaching out to people who needed to know that their government cared about them.” The awful hypocrisy is this: As we saw when they spent trillions trying to impose democracy on Iraq and Afghanistan, W. and Cheney believe in big government, in a strong, centralized executive power. But with Katrina, they chose not to use it.” – Maureen Dowd, in the New York Times. 

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