The most striking comment in tonight's press conference was President Obama's statement that his administration and Iran, a state sponsor of terror, may soon find a way to interact with "mutual respect." Perhaps President Obama can respect a regime that stones women for adultery, tortures and imprisons homosexuals, calls for the destruction of the Jewish state and supports terrorist groups dedicated to that goal and to killing Americans. If so, the American public is unlikely to share his feelings.
Even on the left, the goal has never been to engage with states like Iran on a basis of "mutual respect." Rather the goal has been to hold our noses and put America's interests ahead of concerns about human rights and the like. We are to deal with the Iranians, according to this view, in order to facilitate a withdraw from Iraq and the stabilization of Afghanistan. It's pretty remarkable for any American political leader -- let alone the American president -- to suggest that the United States must create a relationship of "mutual respect" with the thugs in Tehran.
Unlike Joe Biden, Obama can talk for an hour without completely embarrassing himself, but Biden's inability to keep his foot out of his mouth seems to be causing some frustration. Obama was more than a little testy in his response to a question from Major Garrett about Biden's statement that at least 30 percent of the time the administration is going to screw things up. Obama's response: "I don't remember exactly what Joe was referring to, not surprisingly." Nice. I once thought that if Obama managed to win the presidency with Joe Biden as his VP, he'd look like a genius for having the courage to keep Clinton off the ticket despite the help she could have given him in states like Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. I was wrong. Biden is an ongoing embarrassment.
As far as Obama's performance, he set up one strawman after another. It's a rhetorical device that Obama used to good effect during the campaign, but as president it's bad form. Who are these evil monsters who oppose weatherizing federal buildings the homes of low-income families? It turns out it's the U.S. Senate which, with Democratic support, stripped out half the money allotted for that project (reducing it from $6 billion to $3 billion). Who are these people who "just don't think that the federal government should be involved in energy policy"? Or the people who don't want the "federal government be involved in school construction"? Is Ron Paul holding up the stimulus all by himself?
It's easy to forget that Obama could pass this stimulus with almost no Republicans support. What little he needed, three votes from the Republican caucus in the Senate, he got today. The rest of this is theater, performed solely for the effect it might have on his own approval numbers and the approval numbers of the stimulus such as it is -- now reduced from a measure that will create 4 million jobs to one that will "save" four million jobs. One might ask how anybody can track jobs that are saved by the stimulus outside of jobs that are dependent exclusively on federal spending? You can't, and of course, that's the point.
