The Republicans who apparently control Congress (even where they’re a minority, in the Senate) are already vowing to welsh on the agreement that, in the event of the (predictable and inevitable) failure of the “supercommittee” of Congress to come up with at least $1.2 trillion in budget cuts (over ten years), automatic budget cuts would kick in starting in 2013, divided between the gigantic military budget ($500 billion less than the massive increases they were expecting) and the so-called “discretionary budget” (everything else sans Social Security and debt interest) and thus double-crossing the Democrats by exempting the war money cuts.
Obama on November 21 came out in public with a forceful statement that he would veto such a doublecross attempt. On the same day, his Secretary of Offense, the loathsome Pentagon groupie Leon Panetta, squealed that budget cuts to the military would “hollow out” the “services” and leave them as weak as kittens, unable to fulfill their “missions.”
So here we have a cabinet Secretary undercutting his President, blatantly, openly, directly. (Panetta’s been shrieking about “hollowing out” ever since Pentagon “cuts”- i.e. less gigantic increases- have been bruited about.) Can you imagine this happening under Lyndon Johnson? Or Richard Nixon? Loathsome as they were, they knew what being President requires. Strength.
So the question is: is Obama pathetically weak? Or is he duplicitous? Was his statement just another in an endless series of reelection ruses aiming at tricking people into voting for him, as he did in his first Presidential race? Could be either, based on his past behavior. An interesting problem to try and solve.
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