No matter which of the Republican-dominated Sunday shows you opted to subject yourself to, there was a common refrain: no matter how seditiously the Republican Party acted, the problem was the lack of leadership on the part of President Obama.
Of course, on Meet the Press, where no Republican meme is too inane or self-serving to not parrot as conventional wisdom, that was a recurring variation on a theme, brought up over and over again.
While interviewing Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, the intellectually lazy David Gregory uses Ron Fournier's article criticizing President Obama for the shutdown to ask if Obama needs to "absorb" his part of the governing by crisis, as if he's doing this all on his own and it has nothing to do with Republican obstruction.
DAVID GREGORY: Well, to that point, the National Journal has a headline, piece has a headline says, "Obama Wins! Big Whoop. Can He Lead?" Isn't the crisis management that the president decries, isn't that a lasting part of his own legacy here? Doesn't he have to absorb a big part of the responsibility for that?
Right, Dancin' Dave. Ron Fournier (who has NEVER been anything but a spin doctor for the Republican Party and who shrugged off criticism for once telling Karl Rove to "keep up the fight") is worried about Obama's legacy, donchaknow? The overwhelming suicidally stupid tendencies of the tea party-enslaved Congress should not be of concern nor should they worry about their legacy, right?
But bless EJ Dionne, who took up Gregory's promotion of right wing memes later during the roundtable and called it for what it is:
The president, a lot of times, though, when people say the president should lead, what they want him to do is adopt Republican positions and then push for those. That's not leadership, that's capitulation. I think we should stop talking about a grand bargain and try to have normal government in the next two months. Let's just get rid of some of this sequester, which is hurting the economy, and which a lot of Republicans don't like.
That's it in a nutshell. The call for "leadership" by concern trolls like Fournier and Gregory means nothing more than capitulating to the temper tantrums of the Republican Party. And we all know what happens when you give into temper tantrums, right? Unmanageable brats who make everyone miserable.
If it's all the same to Fournier and Gregory and their miserable excuse for journalism, I'll pass. No one will be better off with their version of "leadership".
