Obama Attempts to Preempt GOP Debate With Jobs Speech

Smooth.

After a strange quasi-campaign bus trip through the midwest and an optically-challenged vacation to Martha's Vineyard, President Obama has FINALLY decided when he can reveal his new plan for the economy.

He has decided to schedule a prime-time address that will preempt a GOP Presidential debate.

How petty.

Obama wrote Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., on Wednesday asking to address a joint session of Congress at 8 p.m. on Sept. 7. That, however, is the same time and date as a televised debate between Republican presidential candidates in California.

Source: USA Today

Excellent analysis from AllahPundit at HotAir:

The worst part is that, with the economy on the brink of a double-dip and consumer confidence falling off a cliff, this guy’s mind is still so preoccupied with the campaign that he can’t muster a moment of presidential leadership without counterprogramming it against a Republican primary event. He could have given this speech at any point. Six months ago, the day after the debt-ceiling deal was struck, last week, yesterday, today, tomorrow, the day before the Republican debate, the day after. Any of those would have been fine — the earlier the better, of course, given the magnitude of the problem — but that doesn’t occur to him because his own reelection is ever foremost in his imagination.

Source: HotAir

Let's not forget, this juvenile tactic may be expected of an 8th grade class president, but we are talking about a PRESIDENTIAL SPEECH TO A JOINT SESSION OF CONGRESS. That's a pretty big deal:

Joint-session presidential speeches are usually reserved for either State of the Union addresses (and for a SOTU substitute for newly-installed Presidents, usually called “budget messages”), inaugurations, or for heavily-weighted moments. Both Obama and Bill Clinton gave health-care reform addresses to joint sessions. Otherwise, most of the historic use of joint sessions have to do with war, either their start or their finish. George W. Bush used it only once outside of the SOTU/budget message paradigm, and that was to address the nation after the 9/11 attacks and declare a War on Terror. Reagan gave one on the Geneva Summit in 1985, certainly a heavily-weighted moment in the Cold War.

By putting his jobs speech into the context of historical presidential addresses, Obama is setting a high bar on expectations for his new plan. If all he delivers is the same speeded-up infrastructure spending, gimmicky tax breaks, and social-engineering subsidies for Democratic hobby-horse industries, then he’s risking a spectacular failure — and even more questions about his political and economic competence.

Source: HotAir

This will be ugly, no matter how it plays out.