by Big Dog on Sep 3, 2011 at 12:56 Political
Barack Obama ignored the rules of the House and Senate and said he wanted to give an address to a joint session on September 7th, the day Congress gets back to work. It was logistically impossible because the invite needs to come from the Congress and it needs to be approved by both chambers. The Congress gets back at 1830 on the 7th and it takes time to pass such a resolution. Not to mention that it takes about three hours to properly sweep the Capital for a presidential visit.
Obama did this under the guise that he needs to get right on this jobs issue. It is of utmost importance and he needs to get on it right away. He has been in office for over two years and has been claiming all that time that he is focused like a laser on jobs and the results have been disastrous. Couple this with the fact that he went on vacation for about two weeks and that he has given a number of speeches about jobs and one has to wonder why he absolutely had to have a joint session on the 7th.
That night there is a Republican presidential debate and Thursday is opening day of the NFL season. Obama decided that he would rather take the spotlight off the Republican debate rather than interrupt the start of the NFL season. The White House was gracious enough to say the network holding the debate was free to move the time to accommodate the important address to a joint session of Congress. How nice…
The Speaker of the House sent a letter indicating it would be logistically impossible to have the joint session on the 7th so Obama capitulated and took the 8th instead.
This was an amateur political move by Obama because he was hoping to take some of the attention away from the folks from which his challenger will come. I am glad Speaker Boehner told him to pick another night but I think if they could have done it they should have. It would make Obama look small and, if the Republicans pushed the start of their debate back, they could watch Obama and then hammer him while the speech is fresh in people’s minds.
As it is he has demonstrated that he has little regard for protocol and that he believes he should be able to speak and make it so.
Obama looks smaller each and every day.
Never surrender, never submit.
Print This Post