The Obamacrats and their codependents, the mainstream media, had a hissy fit last week when Speaker John Boehner refused to summon the House into a special joint session of Congress on Wednesday as ordered by the White House. Obama wanted to pontificate about his latest jobs plan – Number 342 if you’re counting. But what really torqued them is that Boehner checked his Droid and said, “Wednesday’s out but it looks like Thursday’s open if you can finish before the Saints-Packers kickoff,” forcing the Sun King to shrug and say “I’ll take it.”
Weak. Incompetent. Unorganized. And those complaints came from Obama’s liberal supporters!
One clown, Clarence Page on MSNBC's "Hardball," even suggested that Obama ignore Boehner and go to the Capitol on Wednesday as planned to deliver his speech, telling the Republicans if they didn’t want to show up that was their choice. “Let the cameras pan the empty seats,” Page snorted, “and see what kind of message that sends to the public”. Thankfully, most people don’t take idiotic ideas like Page’s seriously because they understand what Article I of the Constitution says better than he does.
No president has a right to dictate the proceedings of a constitutionally co-equal branch of government anymore than members of Congress can go to the White House without an invitation.
The White House knew that Obama’s speech would conflict with Wednesday’s Republican debate – the first involving newcomer Rick Perry. They knew because it was hosted by … no, not those evildoers at Fox … but their friends at POLITICO and NBC and broadcast live by their friends at MSNBC, CNBC, Telemundo and live-streamed by POLITICO. Yet Obama spokesman Jay Carney would have us believe the choice of Wednesday was, ah shucks, “just a coincidence.” He went on to say, "And obviously one debate of many that's on one channel of many was not enough reason not to have the speech at the time that we decided to have it." They decided?
Even Democrat Party windbag James Carville, when interviewed about the tiff, said “Given a choice between watching a debate and the speech I would have watched the debate, and I’m not even a Republican.”
When the story started to develop legs, the White House mouthpieces began tripping over their own feet. It was leaked that Obama didn’t cave; he was furious that Boehner – the equivalent to Darth Vader at the White House – wouldn’t give him Wednesday. What probably made Obama furious was not so much the speech kerfuffle but the fact that Boehner comes out on top once again. Boehner forced spending cuts in the continuing resolution stare-down. Then he forced Obama to blink after The Man of the People said there would be no spending cuts without tax increases during the debt ceiling standoff. Now this.
The White House press corps wouldn’t let the story die. They wanted details of how the White House ended up with egg on its face.
Here’s what I’ve been able to piece together.
Around mid-morning on Wednesday August 31, White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley phoned Boehner to say a letter was coming to Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid asking to speak Wednesday. Then without a solid affirmation from Boehner, White House Communications chief Dan Pfeiffer sent out a Twitter announcing the address on Wednesday, which Fox congressional correspondent, Chad Pergram, said came only 15 minutes after Boehner’s office received Daley’s call. Boehner sent back a letter “respectfully inviting” the president to speak Thursday night because the House would be getting back to work Wednesday afternoon, had a vote scheduled for 6:30 p.m., and would not have the time to do a three-hour security sweep and have Obama speak at 8 p.m.
Obey’s boys figured out that if the boss wanted an audience, he’d best not demand prime time on Thursday and compete with the NFL seasonal kick off, so the Sinaitic emanations were moved back an hour to 7 p.m. where he became the warm up act for a football game.
Press Secretary Carney’s excuse for the foul-up was feeble: "We contacted the speaker's office, informed them that we were going to be asking for that day [Wednesday]. No objection was raised at that time," Carney said. Later Pfeiffer used the identical “no objection” explanation when asked his version of what happened. Sounds like a cover story to me, because if Carney and Pfeiffer believed they had Boehner’s okay, they would have said so instead of using weasel words like “no objection was raised.”
In fact Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Boehner, said "No one in the Speaker's office – not the Speaker, not any staff – signed off on the date the White House announced today." Buck continued "Unfortunately we weren't even asked if that date worked for the House. Shortly before it arrived this morning, we were simply informed that a letter was coming. It's unfortunate the White House ignored decades – if not centuries – of the protocol of working out a mutually agreeable date and time before making any public announcement."
This isn’t the first time Obama has had trouble treating his constitutional equals as equals. Following the electoral sweep last November, the White House announced the president would hold a November 18 White House meeting with Congressional leaders without first confirming it with the Republican leaders. Boehner cited a scheduling conflict, forcing Obama to reschedule the meeting to November 30. After first acknowledging with “all due respect to the separation of powers,” Obama used the State of the Union speech in January of 2010 to criticize the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. This past July he demanded – demanded – that House and Senate leaders come to the White House to present their plan personally to him for resolving the debt ceiling crisis when House and Senate negotiations broke down.
During his negotiations with House leaders over the terms of the debt ceiling increase, Obama got into a shouting match with Eric Cantor and then walked out of the meeting. On more than one occasion he has belittled and behaved with the pettiness of a child toward people who disagree with him or refuse to give him his way. He is more the Chief Petty Officer than a president. Unlike a parliamentary system in which the prime minister speaks for the government, the president speaks only for his administration, which is one of three parts of our government.
After being AWOL most of August raising money for his reelection and riding around in a multi-million dollar bus on a Midwestern stump speech circuit trying to resuscitate his sinking poll numbers, Obama took another of his endless vacations at a $50,000 a week hideaway on Martha’s Vineyard while the country languished above 9% unemployment. Yet he accuses Congress of being “do nothing” and insists that they open their fall session with a speech from him. I’m sure that after being called “sons of bitches” by James Hoffa, who introduced the President’s Labor Day Teamsters speech in Detroit – and being called “barbarians” in the Vice President’s Labor Day speech – the Republican caucus can’t wait to hear the jobs speech and its predictable cry for bipartisanship in putting “country above politics.”
Before last week, presidents and congressional leaders customarily agreed on the schedule for joint session speeches in private before making a public announcement. But this is difficult for a person like Obama who views himself as Maximum Leader and sees Congress as his personal staff. The flap over something which should have been routine displays his ignorance of congressional relations protocols, his lack of understanding the meaning of the Constitution, which he claims to be expert in, his bankruptcy of political skill other than giving speeches, and his misuse of the exclusive nature of joint session addresses.
Joint sessions of Congress are rare, and special joint sessions are even rarer. Historically they have been reserved for occasions in which the President must address a major issue of national concern – usually related to national security. Therefore, Franklin Roosevelt delivered his “Day of Infamy” speech in a special joint session the day after the Pearl Harbor attack, and he delivered another to report the outcome of the Yalta Conference and its plan for post-war reorganization of Europe. Truman announced the Marshall Plan, Carter the SALT II treaty, and Reagan reported the Geneva Summit results in special joint sessions. Bush I made a joint session address to explain the need for the first Gulf War and spoke again to announce its victory. Bush II spoke to a special joint session only once in eight years – to announce the War on Terror after the 9/11.
Clinton was the first president to politicize a special joint session address. He gave only one address in eight years and that was to hawk HillaryCare and ask Congress to pass it – which it refused to do. Obama has already made one special joint session address in September 2009 to sell ObamaCare. When I say “sell” it was to sell the voters, since Obama already had absolute majorities in both houses of Congress to pass both bills. ObamaCare was rammed through without a single Republican vote and a majority of the voters still hate it.
Special joint sessions are held in the House chamber because it’s larger than the Senate chamber. Therefore it’s the Speaker’s call to grant and schedule the request for a joint session, although the Senate Majority Leader’s concurrence is sought for courtesy’s sake. Also for courtesy’s sake, a presidential request would probably never be turned down even when the purpose is a political domestic policy proposal as were Clinton’s and Obama’s addresses. Notwithstanding the current 0-2 batting average on political sales jobs, Thursday’s was Obama’s second try – this time facing a House majority opposing his program.
The choice of venue and time to speak about jobs was Obama’s. This speech didn’t merit a special joint session. It should have been delivered in half the time from the Oval Office. He chose a special joint session because he knew most networks would give it air time, which they did, and because he wanted to put the spotlight on Congress as the villains in obstructing his jobs program – which was little more than the shovel-ready horse hockey that has already failed to create jobs. Thursday’s was an unvarnished reelection stump speech, which Obama delivered as if he were a coach trying to rally a team down by five touchdowns in the fourth quarter. He pleaded “pass this bill” more than a dozen times. Bill? What bill? Did he drop off a bill when he came to the Capitol? Nope. There is no bill, no details of how he wants to spend a half trillion dollars. No nothing. Because spending bills originate in the House. Fat chance of that happening, which Obama knew at the get-go when he started this latest special joint session charade.
Boehner gave a plausible, if not totally accurate, reason for postponing Obama’s speech by one day. Still, the Obamacrats howled. Never before in the history of the Republic, they wailed, had Congress turned down a president’s request to deliver an address on a particular day. Switching into overdrive, the mainstream media went after Boehner the Bad for dissing their guy. This excerpt from the Baltimore Sun is typical of the liberal hit pieces:
There was an era when a president of the United States told Congress he was going to address it on a matter of national importance, and that was that. Can anyone seriously imagine that if Democrat Lyndon Johnson or Republican Ronald Reagan had said he wanted to speak in the House chamber on a certain date, Congress under either party's control would tell him no, and when he could?
Well, as a matter of fact there was a time when a request from Ronald Reagan was turned down by the House Speaker “Tip” O’Neil. But whereas Boehner “respectfully invited” Obama to speak on the following night because of logistical reasons, O’Neil refused Reagan’s request altogether.
It happened during the summer of 1986 when Reagan wanted to speak only to the House – not a joint session of Congress – before it voted on funding the anti-communist “Contra” rebels who were fighting the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Reagan already had the Senate’s funding votes but he didn’t have the House’s. House Speaker O’Neil didn’t want to be vilified for blocking the funding, which could have happened in a House-only speech so he offered Reagan two choices – three, really. He could speak to a joint session, which would deflect the spotlight from the Democrat-controlled House, or he could speak to the House only, provided he would allow members to ask him questions, or he could not speak to the House. It was a Hobson’s choice. Reagan chose “none of the above,” shrugged off the rebuff, and asked one of his aides: “They have televisions up there on Capitol Hill, don’t they?” So he made his case on television, won the House vote, and got the funding for the Contras.
Reagan’s House-only speech would have been a political play. Obama did the same thing Thursday. Spending bills have to originate in the House. Obama wants to spend jobs into existence, which are the only type of jobs he’s ever held, so Obama, who has the Senate votes in his pocket, hopes he can put the House Republican majority on the hot seat one year before their reelection and portray them as the heartless “tax cuts for the rich” guys who won’t help him put America back to work.
Politics ain’t beanbag. This is the same guy who invited House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan to listen to his budget speech at George Washington University and then lambasted the Ryan Roadmap for American plan as unworkable. The same guy who appeals for non-partisanship and then allows his political bag men to call Republicans and Tea Party advocates terrorists, barbarians, and sons of bitches. Preempting the Republican debate and stumping his reelection with a joint session speech would have been a solid twofer if Obama had been able to pull it off. Boehner was right not to let the House become a reelection prop.
When my wife and I want to go to someone’s house for a visit, we call ahead to make sure that it’s convenient. Usually we bring something – maybe a dessert or a bottle of wine. My advice to Obama is this: the next time you want to speak to Congress, call ahead and make sure your visit is okay.
Oh yeah … stop and get some donuts.
Weak. Incompetent. Unorganized. And those complaints came from Obama’s liberal supporters!
One clown, Clarence Page on MSNBC's "Hardball," even suggested that Obama ignore Boehner and go to the Capitol on Wednesday as planned to deliver his speech, telling the Republicans if they didn’t want to show up that was their choice. “Let the cameras pan the empty seats,” Page snorted, “and see what kind of message that sends to the public”. Thankfully, most people don’t take idiotic ideas like Page’s seriously because they understand what Article I of the Constitution says better than he does.
No president has a right to dictate the proceedings of a constitutionally co-equal branch of government anymore than members of Congress can go to the White House without an invitation.
The White House knew that Obama’s speech would conflict with Wednesday’s Republican debate – the first involving newcomer Rick Perry. They knew because it was hosted by … no, not those evildoers at Fox … but their friends at POLITICO and NBC and broadcast live by their friends at MSNBC, CNBC, Telemundo and live-streamed by POLITICO. Yet Obama spokesman Jay Carney would have us believe the choice of Wednesday was, ah shucks, “just a coincidence.” He went on to say, "And obviously one debate of many that's on one channel of many was not enough reason not to have the speech at the time that we decided to have it." They decided?
Even Democrat Party windbag James Carville, when interviewed about the tiff, said “Given a choice between watching a debate and the speech I would have watched the debate, and I’m not even a Republican.”
When the story started to develop legs, the White House mouthpieces began tripping over their own feet. It was leaked that Obama didn’t cave; he was furious that Boehner – the equivalent to Darth Vader at the White House – wouldn’t give him Wednesday. What probably made Obama furious was not so much the speech kerfuffle but the fact that Boehner comes out on top once again. Boehner forced spending cuts in the continuing resolution stare-down. Then he forced Obama to blink after The Man of the People said there would be no spending cuts without tax increases during the debt ceiling standoff. Now this.
The White House press corps wouldn’t let the story die. They wanted details of how the White House ended up with egg on its face.
Here’s what I’ve been able to piece together.
Around mid-morning on Wednesday August 31, White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley phoned Boehner to say a letter was coming to Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid asking to speak Wednesday. Then without a solid affirmation from Boehner, White House Communications chief Dan Pfeiffer sent out a Twitter announcing the address on Wednesday, which Fox congressional correspondent, Chad Pergram, said came only 15 minutes after Boehner’s office received Daley’s call. Boehner sent back a letter “respectfully inviting” the president to speak Thursday night because the House would be getting back to work Wednesday afternoon, had a vote scheduled for 6:30 p.m., and would not have the time to do a three-hour security sweep and have Obama speak at 8 p.m.
Obey’s boys figured out that if the boss wanted an audience, he’d best not demand prime time on Thursday and compete with the NFL seasonal kick off, so the Sinaitic emanations were moved back an hour to 7 p.m. where he became the warm up act for a football game.
Press Secretary Carney’s excuse for the foul-up was feeble: "We contacted the speaker's office, informed them that we were going to be asking for that day [Wednesday]. No objection was raised at that time," Carney said. Later Pfeiffer used the identical “no objection” explanation when asked his version of what happened. Sounds like a cover story to me, because if Carney and Pfeiffer believed they had Boehner’s okay, they would have said so instead of using weasel words like “no objection was raised.”
In fact Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Boehner, said "No one in the Speaker's office – not the Speaker, not any staff – signed off on the date the White House announced today." Buck continued "Unfortunately we weren't even asked if that date worked for the House. Shortly before it arrived this morning, we were simply informed that a letter was coming. It's unfortunate the White House ignored decades – if not centuries – of the protocol of working out a mutually agreeable date and time before making any public announcement."
This isn’t the first time Obama has had trouble treating his constitutional equals as equals. Following the electoral sweep last November, the White House announced the president would hold a November 18 White House meeting with Congressional leaders without first confirming it with the Republican leaders. Boehner cited a scheduling conflict, forcing Obama to reschedule the meeting to November 30. After first acknowledging with “all due respect to the separation of powers,” Obama used the State of the Union speech in January of 2010 to criticize the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. This past July he demanded – demanded – that House and Senate leaders come to the White House to present their plan personally to him for resolving the debt ceiling crisis when House and Senate negotiations broke down.
During his negotiations with House leaders over the terms of the debt ceiling increase, Obama got into a shouting match with Eric Cantor and then walked out of the meeting. On more than one occasion he has belittled and behaved with the pettiness of a child toward people who disagree with him or refuse to give him his way. He is more the Chief Petty Officer than a president. Unlike a parliamentary system in which the prime minister speaks for the government, the president speaks only for his administration, which is one of three parts of our government.
After being AWOL most of August raising money for his reelection and riding around in a multi-million dollar bus on a Midwestern stump speech circuit trying to resuscitate his sinking poll numbers, Obama took another of his endless vacations at a $50,000 a week hideaway on Martha’s Vineyard while the country languished above 9% unemployment. Yet he accuses Congress of being “do nothing” and insists that they open their fall session with a speech from him. I’m sure that after being called “sons of bitches” by James Hoffa, who introduced the President’s Labor Day Teamsters speech in Detroit – and being called “barbarians” in the Vice President’s Labor Day speech – the Republican caucus can’t wait to hear the jobs speech and its predictable cry for bipartisanship in putting “country above politics.”
Before last week, presidents and congressional leaders customarily agreed on the schedule for joint session speeches in private before making a public announcement. But this is difficult for a person like Obama who views himself as Maximum Leader and sees Congress as his personal staff. The flap over something which should have been routine displays his ignorance of congressional relations protocols, his lack of understanding the meaning of the Constitution, which he claims to be expert in, his bankruptcy of political skill other than giving speeches, and his misuse of the exclusive nature of joint session addresses.
Joint sessions of Congress are rare, and special joint sessions are even rarer. Historically they have been reserved for occasions in which the President must address a major issue of national concern – usually related to national security. Therefore, Franklin Roosevelt delivered his “Day of Infamy” speech in a special joint session the day after the Pearl Harbor attack, and he delivered another to report the outcome of the Yalta Conference and its plan for post-war reorganization of Europe. Truman announced the Marshall Plan, Carter the SALT II treaty, and Reagan reported the Geneva Summit results in special joint sessions. Bush I made a joint session address to explain the need for the first Gulf War and spoke again to announce its victory. Bush II spoke to a special joint session only once in eight years – to announce the War on Terror after the 9/11.
Clinton was the first president to politicize a special joint session address. He gave only one address in eight years and that was to hawk HillaryCare and ask Congress to pass it – which it refused to do. Obama has already made one special joint session address in September 2009 to sell ObamaCare. When I say “sell” it was to sell the voters, since Obama already had absolute majorities in both houses of Congress to pass both bills. ObamaCare was rammed through without a single Republican vote and a majority of the voters still hate it.
Special joint sessions are held in the House chamber because it’s larger than the Senate chamber. Therefore it’s the Speaker’s call to grant and schedule the request for a joint session, although the Senate Majority Leader’s concurrence is sought for courtesy’s sake. Also for courtesy’s sake, a presidential request would probably never be turned down even when the purpose is a political domestic policy proposal as were Clinton’s and Obama’s addresses. Notwithstanding the current 0-2 batting average on political sales jobs, Thursday’s was Obama’s second try – this time facing a House majority opposing his program.
The choice of venue and time to speak about jobs was Obama’s. This speech didn’t merit a special joint session. It should have been delivered in half the time from the Oval Office. He chose a special joint session because he knew most networks would give it air time, which they did, and because he wanted to put the spotlight on Congress as the villains in obstructing his jobs program – which was little more than the shovel-ready horse hockey that has already failed to create jobs. Thursday’s was an unvarnished reelection stump speech, which Obama delivered as if he were a coach trying to rally a team down by five touchdowns in the fourth quarter. He pleaded “pass this bill” more than a dozen times. Bill? What bill? Did he drop off a bill when he came to the Capitol? Nope. There is no bill, no details of how he wants to spend a half trillion dollars. No nothing. Because spending bills originate in the House. Fat chance of that happening, which Obama knew at the get-go when he started this latest special joint session charade.
Boehner gave a plausible, if not totally accurate, reason for postponing Obama’s speech by one day. Still, the Obamacrats howled. Never before in the history of the Republic, they wailed, had Congress turned down a president’s request to deliver an address on a particular day. Switching into overdrive, the mainstream media went after Boehner the Bad for dissing their guy. This excerpt from the Baltimore Sun is typical of the liberal hit pieces:
There was an era when a president of the United States told Congress he was going to address it on a matter of national importance, and that was that. Can anyone seriously imagine that if Democrat Lyndon Johnson or Republican Ronald Reagan had said he wanted to speak in the House chamber on a certain date, Congress under either party's control would tell him no, and when he could?
Well, as a matter of fact there was a time when a request from Ronald Reagan was turned down by the House Speaker “Tip” O’Neil. But whereas Boehner “respectfully invited” Obama to speak on the following night because of logistical reasons, O’Neil refused Reagan’s request altogether.
It happened during the summer of 1986 when Reagan wanted to speak only to the House – not a joint session of Congress – before it voted on funding the anti-communist “Contra” rebels who were fighting the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Reagan already had the Senate’s funding votes but he didn’t have the House’s. House Speaker O’Neil didn’t want to be vilified for blocking the funding, which could have happened in a House-only speech so he offered Reagan two choices – three, really. He could speak to a joint session, which would deflect the spotlight from the Democrat-controlled House, or he could speak to the House only, provided he would allow members to ask him questions, or he could not speak to the House. It was a Hobson’s choice. Reagan chose “none of the above,” shrugged off the rebuff, and asked one of his aides: “They have televisions up there on Capitol Hill, don’t they?” So he made his case on television, won the House vote, and got the funding for the Contras.
Reagan’s House-only speech would have been a political play. Obama did the same thing Thursday. Spending bills have to originate in the House. Obama wants to spend jobs into existence, which are the only type of jobs he’s ever held, so Obama, who has the Senate votes in his pocket, hopes he can put the House Republican majority on the hot seat one year before their reelection and portray them as the heartless “tax cuts for the rich” guys who won’t help him put America back to work.
Politics ain’t beanbag. This is the same guy who invited House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan to listen to his budget speech at George Washington University and then lambasted the Ryan Roadmap for American plan as unworkable. The same guy who appeals for non-partisanship and then allows his political bag men to call Republicans and Tea Party advocates terrorists, barbarians, and sons of bitches. Preempting the Republican debate and stumping his reelection with a joint session speech would have been a solid twofer if Obama had been able to pull it off. Boehner was right not to let the House become a reelection prop.
When my wife and I want to go to someone’s house for a visit, we call ahead to make sure that it’s convenient. Usually we bring something – maybe a dessert or a bottle of wine. My advice to Obama is this: the next time you want to speak to Congress, call ahead and make sure your visit is okay.
Oh yeah … stop and get some donuts.
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