Barack Obama’s “naughty or nice” list is this season’s Slurpee. Back in 2010, President Obama was fond of dismissing congressional Republicans — “the other side” — by caricaturing them as standing on the sidelines drinking Slurpees simply “watching” Democrats as they were “slipping and sliding and sweating.” I know he is on his victory march now, and we are supposed to believe he has a mandate to do as he pleases (given his lord-and-savior status), but the president might remember that there is a reason John Boehner is speaker of the House — people responded badly the last time he operated as though there was no legitimate alternative to his will, and they gave Republicans the House majority.
It’s as if no one around the president bothers to read Peggy Noonan when her critique is not of that other side. About lunch yesterday she observed:
To the extent the GOP has an elected face, it is that of Speaker John Boehner. And he is precisely the man with whom Mr. Obama should be having friendly lunches. In fact, the meal with Mitt just may be a clever attempt to obscure the fact that the president isn’t really meeting with those with whom he’s supposed to be thrashing out the fiscal cliff.
The president’s campaign stop today just adds to Kim Strassel’s point: “Mr. Obama’s tendency to campaign rather than lead, to speechify rather than negotiate, has already defined this lame-duck session.”
Maybe someone should get the president a subscription to the Wall Street Journal for Christmas?