Joe Klein is taking a break from his usual attacks on Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin to go after a former Bush administration official for daring to criticize President Obama. Posting on “Swampland,” the blog of pro-Obama Time Magazine, Klein couldn’t handle this truthful remark about the Obama administration by Pete Wehner, whom Klein childishly refers to as the “Bush Assistant Commissar for Pretentious Propaganda”:
The Obama presidency is struggling badly right now — and things will, I think, get worse rather than better.
While first conceding at least that Obama’s record is “mixed,” Klein then launches into a full-throated defense of the Obama administration’s economic record and foreign policy – both of which are abject failures. Lets compare just a couple of Klein’s pro-Obama talking points with the facts, something this quack journalist for Time Magazine seems unable to do:
Klein: [Obama] has achieved historic success with its economic responses to the Great Recession
Fact: Unemployment presently stands at 9.9%. Obama told us before the stimulus bill was passed that unemployment would not rise above 8%. When George W. Bush left office, unemployment was 7.6%.
Fact: According to the Bank for International Settlements, the United States’ structural deficit (the amount of the deficit adjusted for the conomic cycle) has risen from 3.1% of GDP in 2007 to 9.2% in 2010. The national debt stood at $10.6 trillon on the day Obama took office. As of April 30, 2010 the national debt stood at just under $13 trillion.
Klein: Its foreign policy has largely rectified the bombastic bellicosity of the Bush years
Fact: Obama has replaced Bush’s supposed “bombastic bellicosity” with bows and apologies to foreign leaders for all of our country’s supposed misdeeds. He has given Iran a year and a half to continue on its march towards achieving a nuclear arms capability while trying the unconditional negotiations route. North Korea smells blood in the water and is more beligerent than at any time since the truce that ended the Korea war in 1953. We have had several terrorist incidents on our soil – most of them foiled by sheer luck, the incompetence of the terrorists and vigilant citizens rather than any steps taken by the hapless Department of Homeland Security. Our relations with Israel, our closest ally in the Mideast, is at an historic low. Obama embraces the presidents of Brazil and Mexico and they return the favor by publicly badmouthing the U.S. The list goes on and on.
This does not even take any account of the Obama administration’s inaction in confronting the consequences of the oil spill in the Gulf and its lack of any effort to stem the tide of illegal immigration.
I think that Pete Wehner, the” Bush Assistant Commissar for Pretentious Propaganda” according to Joe Klein, has already been proven right. Things are getting worse with every passing day.