Obama Forgets How to Stunt

The President backed down right after he laid his swag down.

The Debate v.s. Jobs Talk: 50 Cent Would Teach Obama how to Stunt  

Late Wednesday morning, President Obama requested a joint session of Congress to roll out his big jobs bill. The catch was that the day he wanted to give the speech, September 7, just happened to coincide with when the Republicans were going to have a major televised debate at the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California. Obama pulled an ice-cold political move,  upstaging his rivals for a legitimate purpose and putting them all in their place.

Rick Perry pulled the same move before the Iowa straw polls and the other candidates' heads have been spinning ever since. Consider how ridiculous would the Republicans in Congress look refusing to have a joint session for the President to talk about jobs? Apparently not ridiculous enough because last evening after a stand-off that amounted to a few hours House Speaker John Boehner said no to Obama’s joint session request (the first time this has happened in presidential history) and asked Obama to move his speech to the 8th …. And that’s exactly what Obama did, to the vast disappointed of many a political observer. 

I’ll Teach you How to Stunt

President Barack Obama’s penchant for depicting himself as the grown-up managing a House of petulant little children doesn’t always go over well with the public. If you’re going to play black daddy in this day and age, the public wants a little less Cliff Huxtable and a little more Bernie Mack. However Boehner’s smack-down of Obama’s move to upstage his rival’s debate is another example of Obama not holding his ground. Boehner and other Republican leaders called Obama’s request a political stunt. And Boehner was right, Obama was stuntin’ but more like 50 Cent than a politician.

Back in 2005, 50 Cent showed us all how to stunt. In slang that means to show off your power, your bling or your swag and make others take notice. And initially that’s what Obama was doing with his speech v debate move, showing that he still runs this place and he can marshal all the forces of Congress at any time while the GOP debaters were just pretenders. From the extension of the unaffordable Bush tax cuts to the debt ceiling default, the Republicans have done a masterful job of running the Titanic into an iceberg and then saying, “Look at what the Captain let happen!”