OBAMA'S WEAKNESS – AT 9:30 A.M. ET:  This is one of the slowest news days of the year, so, unless the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor again to get it right this time, don't expect dramatic developments.  On the other hand, if a politician has to concede publicly that he's a secret predator, this would be the day to annouce it.  Who's listening?

But Michael Barone does have a fascinating retrospective on this last week's dust-up between Obama and Congress on the issue of when the president would deliver his jobs speech.  You'll recall that Obama simply announced a date and time, which, strangely, happened to coincide exactly with a major televised Republican debate.  Not good.  Barone comments:

I think it illustrates several of the weaknesses of this presidency.

One is a lack of regard for the Constitution. Congress is a separate branch of government, set up by Article I of the Constitution, which is not about the Executive Branch as Joe Biden said in the 2008 vice presidential debate. (Media outfits that dispatched dozens of investigative reporters to Alaska were apparently incapable of discovering this obvious error.)

Before last week, presidents and congressional leaders always agreed privately on scheduling presidential addresses to joint sessions before any public announcement was made. But it appears that no such agreement was made here, just a brusque announcement that had to be retracted.

Another weakness on display was contempt for public opinion. White House press secretary Jay Carney said it was just "coincidental" that the president wanted to speak at the same time as the Reagan Library debate. It was just "one debate that's one of many on one channel."

But those with memories that go back beyond last week may recall that in May 2009 Obama scrambled to find a venue for a speech at exactly the same time as former Vice President Cheney was scheduled to speak at the American Enterprise Institute on detainee questioning issues. Cheney coolly watched Obama on television and then delivered his own speech.

Hamhandedly trying to bigfoot the opposition is a habit with this president, not a coincidence.

A third Obama weakness is his propensity to charge his political opponents with playing politics when he is doing exactly that himself. In previewing this latest jobs-and-the-economy speech, Carney said that Obama will make the case "that politics is broken, and that politics is getting in the way of the very necessary things we need to do."

This from the president who has brushed aside one bipartisan initiative after another, from the health care initiative of Sens. Ron Wyden and Bob Bennett to the recommendations of his own fiscal commission headed by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson.

COMMENT:  Well said and exactly right.  The president is basically a small-time Chicago politician with a golden voice.  He needed ten more years of seasoning before he should have even considered running for president.  What we have in the White House is a perpetual candidate with no particular policies.  Those policies that have succeeded were largely inherited from the Bush-Cheney administration.

But he's a superb campaigner, which is one reason I worry about the election that gets closer and closer.

September 4, 2011