Opinion

I hate to interrupt fulminations about President Obama's three incredible shrinking scandals with something as prosaic as concern about the GOP's threatening to sabotage the economy, but a couple of bits of real news emerged yesterday regarding the debt ceiling (yes that, again).

Last week, the title for my blog post was the Absentee President.  This week the title should be the Clueless President; or is he? President Obama, who is praised for his intellectual and political capabilities, all of a sudden wants the American people to believe that he was unaware of the major scandals that are eating away at his political capital and perhaps his second term.   

David Simon, of "The Wire" fame, once responded to the idea of "doing more with less" by saying, "That's the bullshit of bean counters who care only about the bottom line. You do less with less." For the Internal Revenue Service, the line should perhaps be updated to "you do less with less, and also cause a scandal."

President Obama has fantasies of "going Bulworth" on Congress and Washington, letting loose with everything he really thinks and trying to do what he really wants, despite the political repercussions, The New York Times reports. And congressional Republicans see Obama not so much like the fictional politician in the old Warren Betty movie, but as Richard Nixon, forced to resign in disgrace because of the Watergate scandal and reviled for his overuse of executive power.