The Thread is an in-depth look at how major news and controversies are being debated across the online spectrum.  The Thread is an in-depth look at how major news and controversies are being debated across the online spectrum.  It’s tough to make plans. We’re all so busy, no? Have you tried to schedule a simple lunch lately? Who has time? And the second you put it on the calendar you remember that other thing that absolutely can not be rescheduled. Or someone reminds you.  These sorts of annoying things apparently also happen to very important people, like the president of the United States. You see? They’re just like you and me. Except their scheduling mishaps set off little media storms and apparently have significant political repercussions.  That’s what happened this week when the White House tried to set the date of Sept. 7 for the president’s post-vacation joint-session speech to Congress on jobs and the economy. The request for that date was rejected by the House speaker, John Boehner. Not a great time for them. A debate among Republican candidates, hosted by MSNBC and Politico, was planned for that time. Would the president consider another day for his speech? Of course! Sept. 8 it is, then, 7 p.m. The leader of the free world would also most likely take care to wrap up before the 8:30 kickoff of the Saints-Packers game Thursday night, the debut of the N.F.L. season, labor willing.  (For an actual detailing of the flap and negotiations, see this piece by The Times’ Helene Cooper and Jackie Calmes.)  Everybody happy? Of course not. This is Washington.  You won’t be shocked to learn that Republicans and Democrats in this instance were not working in harmony. Accusations of underhandedness and manipulation flew from one side to the other, as did protestations of innocence, ignorance and good will in defense. But it was the White House, with so much to lose politically, that took the hardest hits from commentators.  Prominent among the reaction was a keening despair among would-be Obama supporters, who saw the date change as a backing down in the face of Republican obstructionism, so soon after the budget battle. At Salon, Cenck Uygur decried what he called the president’s “embarrassing fail.”  So, this leads to the eternal question of whether Obama is just weak or if he is a brilliant strategist who has been playing rope-a-dope all along. I am so silly that I still had hope. …  He doesn’t realize he’s getting pummeled. He thinks this is all still a genius strategy to capture centrists by compromising on every single little thing. He is not trying to put on an appearance of weakness to lull his opponent into a false sense of complacency. He doesn’t even realize he is being weak. He’s the one with the false sense of complacency. As he’s getting knocked around the ring, he thinks he’s winning.  These guys in the Obama camp are in for a horrible, rude awakening. Sometime in the next year, they are going to blink and realize they are lying flat on their back on the canvas. Then as they finally stumble up, they’ll realize they should have started fighting 11 rounds ago. Then a panic will set in, but I’m afraid it will be too late by then.  At Swampland Michael Scherer also pointed to what he sees as a lack of urgency in the administration’s strategy, with the next election a little more than a year off:  At another point in Obama’s presidency, such a minor skirmish would not have mattered all that much. But this is, in fact, a key point in Obama’s presidency. … [T]he White House is preparing a major shift in tone and substance in the hopes of reasserting Obama’s leadership abilities heading into the next election. Recent months, of course, have not been kind to the President’s polls, which have registered roughly 10-point declines in Obama’s reputation for being a “strong leader” and for being “able to get things done.” …  The problem this raises for Obama is real and immediate. He faces a perception problem, not just with Congress but with a growing share of the American people who think he is so eager to find compromise on key issues of national importance that he allows himself to be pushed around. Wednesday’s confusion will not help solve this problem.  At The Washington Post blog, Post Partisan, James Downie also saw faulty gamesmanship on the part of the administration:  If this was an attempt to make Republicans look unreasonable, then, in almost every conceivable way, it failed spectacularly. And scheduling the speech during the GOP debate, even if Boehner had immediately acceded, is the one way the White House could guarantee a) that fewer voters would be watching and that b) viewers and pundits would pay less attention to the speech’s content and more to the theatrics around it. In other words, it’s the easiest way to lessen the speech’s chances at success. If this is a preview of Obama’s re-election campaign, Democrats should be very worried.  Noah Kristula-Green took note of a report of the dispute in Politico, which quoted an unnamed White House Source saying that the planned Republican debate was not “sacrosanct” because “it was going on a cable station.” (Not sacrosanct? Ever heard of “Mad Men”?). This showed, Kristula-Green wrote at Frum Forum, that the White House has “a very peculiar view of media”:  [L]et’s focus on how the source demeans cable news.  It’s true that in absolute terms, MSNBC does not have very high ratings. MSNBC also does not have the deepest penetration into American households.  Yet I am willing to bet that the people who do watch MSNBC are very interested in politics. Whether they are liberal or conservative, they are invested in the 24 hour news cycle. They are more likely to be frustrated if they have to choose between an important speech and a GOP debate.  People with niche media needs have more options than ever to have those needs met. Sure, the country as a whole doesn’t really care when the speech is held, but for people who are invested in the GOP debate they not only care more, they also have louder megaphones.  A small pocket of support could be found over at The Fix, a Washington Post blog, where Chris Cillizza counted the ways in which “Obama and his political team were smart to reschedule” the speech. Among them, the move gives Obama the “last word”:  If Obama had stuck to Sept. 7, it would have allowed every Republican presidential candidate a real-time opportunity to respond (and criticize) his proposal. The coverage of the speech would be inter-mingled with coverage of the debate, meaning that Obama’s preferred message would be decidedly muddled. By waiting a day, Obama can more tightly control his message and get the last word (or close to it) of what will be a pivotal week in the presidential race.  But honestly, Cillizza was in the minority.  There was, though, a bit of outrage toward the perceived insouciance of Boehner. Most notably, Tommy Christopher at Mediaite drew a lot of attention with a banner of indignation, in which he suggested that Boehner should resign for “his unprecendented insult to the president.” (Unprecedented insult? Doesn’t he have an Internet connection?) Christopher did not take the next logical step of demanding that Boehner and Obama settle the matter in a duel — seconds anyone? — but he did say this: “Boehner has insulted and disrespected the office of the President of the United States, and should resign.” Boehner, he wrote, “made a conscious decision to put Barack Obama in his place by making a public refusal.” He continued:  This isn’t the first unprecedented Republican insult to the presidency under Barack Obama (but it is, by far, the worst), and it isn’t even the first time John Boehner has tried to make the President “heel” with his datebook. It ought to be the last. Every American who has an appropriate respect for the office of the presidency should demand that John Boehner resign, and every legislator should amplify that demand. The problems facing this country are too great to be left in the hands of someone with such contempt for its highest office.  The media, meanwhile, ought to abandon its fetish foe false objectivity, and recognize the facts. All parties agree the President gave the Speaker sufficient notice, and I cannot think of another president in history whom the media would suggest should have been preempted by a routine political debate, certainly not in a time of national crisis. The media is complicit in the insult through its failure to recognize this.  In a somewhat more measured reflection, Ezra Klein captured the broader sense of despair that the speech dust-up must have triggered in many citizens:  [I]n the parlance of Washington, Boehner “won.” And perhaps he did. But the rest of us lost. If it wasn’t already clear that Republicans in congress have no intention of working with the White House on further help for the jobless, it’s plenty clear now. If it wasn’t already clear to the business community that the two parties absolutely hate each other and there is no reason to believe that Washington will be able to help the economy if what little recovery we have turns south, it’s plenty clear now.  To paraphrase economist Brad DeLong, last night was one of those nights when you remember that even taking into account the fact that our political system is performing worse than you could possibly imagine, it’s performing worse than you can possibly imagine. Washington has made many more consequential missteps than this one. But few of them have been so thoroughly depressing, so insistent on showing us, with brutal clarity, what the greatest nation in the world has come to.  Robert Reich has some advice for the president, who might be looking to counter the “weakness” charges that have been flying all week. For inspiration Reich looks back to long before the term “post-partisan” was even conceived:  The winner of the 2012 presidential election will be the person who comes off as the toughest fighter for average Americans.  Earth to Obama: Remember Harry (Give ‘em Hell) Truman.  Here’s Truman’s acceptance speech at the Philadelphia convention that nominated him prior to the 1948 election:  Senator Barkley and I will win this election and make those Republicans like it… We will do that because they are wrong and we are right… [T]he people know the Democratic Party is the people’s party, and the Republican Party is the party of special interests and it always has been and always will be… The Republican Party… favors the privileged few and not the common, every-day man. Ever since its inception that Party has been under the control of special privilege, and they concretely proved it in the 80th Congress. They proved it by the things they did to the people and not for them. They proved it by the things they failed to do.  Point taken. Let’s just make sure we’re all done by kickoff.
A cross-party squabble over the scheduling of the president's next speech turned out to be no small matter.