BUMBLING BARACK – AT 9:22 A.M. ET:  What is it about Obama?  He was such a smooth candidate in 2008, but, as president, he messes up every time he opens his mouth.

He's going to give a major speech about jobs on Thursday to a joint session of Congress.  That's a big deal in Washington.  How often, as a friend of mine asks, does a president address Congress outside the State of the Union message?  So, you would think the president would try to build support from both sides of the aisle before the speech, demonstrating that, as president, he's above petty politics.

But Barack Obama has never been above petty politics.  He is petty politics.  The Chicago clubhouse all the way.  Consider his warm embrace of the Republican Party in a speech just yesterday, as the Washington Post reports:

DETROIT — Surrounded by thousands of labor union members chanting “four more years,” President Obama began a high-stakes campaign to jump-start the struggling economy with a broad range of job-creation programs. The coming proposals, he said, will show whether Republicans in Congress “can put country before party.”

Oh, that's just swell.  Question the patriotism of Republicans in Congress.  That ought to get them applauding when the president makes his grand entrance.  If a Republican president said that about Dems in Congress he'd, within five seconds, be labeled a modern-day McCarthyite.

And get this for nerve:

Obama, who is scheduled to deliver a speech to a joint session of Congress on Thursday, told the Labor Day rally of auto workers, health-care employees and school teachers that he will present a far-reaching jobs plan aimed at winning bipartisan support.

He's already questioned the Republicans' patriotism, and now he says he'll present a plan to win their support.  Does anyone read these presidential speeches before they're delivered?

And the real message:

“But we’re not going to wait for them,” he added. “We're going to see if we’ve got some straight shooters, see if congressional Republicans can put country before party. We’re going to give them a plan and say, ‘Do you want to create jobs? . . . Show us what you’ve got.’ ”

Translated into English:  We know we can't get anything through Congress, so we're going to do as much through executive action as possible. 

We'll be fair, of course, and wait to evaluate the president's ideas after his Thursday speech.  But one would think that, if he actually had any economic ideas, they'd have surfaced long before now. 

While the speech is anticipated, there is virtually no confidence that I can detect that the president will actually say anything significant.  The economy will react appropriately.

September 6, 2011