Sunday, August 24, 2014

The front page story of Harry Reid kvetching about his meeting with Obama and Mitch McConnel has been bugging me all week.

There was a front page NYT story this week (8/19/14) about Harry Reid feeling frustrated with the Pres. It has been bugging me all week because it feels like bullshit and the Times fell for it.

The media concensus is that Obama is coasting into the home stretch and everyone is frustrated.  Once a concensus is formed its much easier for journalists to play "pile on"  - especially during beach vacation season.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/19/us/aloof-obama-is-frustrating-his-own-party.html?_r=0
Here's a piece of the story;

But Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, wanted to press another point.
With Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, sitting a few feet away, Mr. Reid complained that Senate Republicans were spitefully blocking the confirmation of dozens of Mr. Obama’s nominees to serve as ambassadors. He expected that the president would back him up and urge Mr. McConnell to relent.
Mr. Obama quickly dismissed the matter.
“You and Mitch work it out,” Mr. Obama said coolly, cutting off any discussion.
Mr. Reid seethed quietly for the rest of the meeting, according to four separate accounts provided by people who spoke with him about it. After his return to the Capitol that afternoon, Mr. Reid told other senators and his staff members that he was astonished by how disengaged the president seemed. After all, these were Mr. Obama’s own ambassadors who were being blocked by Mr. McConnell, and Secretary of State John Kerry had been arguing for months that getting them installed was an urgent necessity for the administration.

What did Reid expect! The President of the United States invites the four top Congressional leaders to his office to talk about  the downward spiral of Iraq to get their input about how to avoid another war. Then Harry Reid tries to change the subject and he's upset when it didnt work.

Without any prior heads up or an agreed upon Democratic strategy he tries to pull the rug out from under Obama's meeting agenda and then whines to the NYTimes about it.

What was the sandbagged President supposed to say? - although I called you here to talk about how to avoid being sucked back into Iraq, losing more lives and flushing another couple of billion down the toilet, lets change the subject to Harry's inability to do his job.

The NY Times let itself be bambozzled by a transparently sleazy attempt by Reid to hijack the press coverage of a White House meeting on Iraq in order to get a front page story dumping responsibility on Obama for Reid's failure of leadership.

I have one thing to say to Harry;