◼ The Anti-Confidence Man - Peggy Noonan/Wall Street Journal
Conservative media should stop taunting the president because he spent the past month warning of catastrophe if the sequester kicks in, and the catastrophe hasn't happened. It hasn't happened yet. He can make it happen. He runs the federal agencies. He can decide on a steady drip of catastrophe—food inspectors furloughed on the 15th, long lines at the airport on the 18th, sobbing children missing Head Start on the 20th, civilian contractors pointing to a rusting USS Truman on the 25th.
He can let them happen one after another, like little spring shoots of doom. And it probably won't look planned and coordinated, it will look spontaneous and inevitable.
And you have to assume that's the plan, because that's kind of how he rolls...
It is interesting that almost at the same time as the dinner the president's people once again begun warning of doom. A blast email from Organizing for Action, signed by Stephanie Cutter, used these words: "Devastating," "obstructionism," "destructive," "this is real." It claimed 100,000 "teaching jobs" will be cut, along with "70,000 spots for preschoolers in Head Start, $43 million for food programs for seniors, $35 million for local fire department," and nutritional assistance for "over half a million women and their families." All this because of loopholes "for millionaires and billionaires" who want their "yachts and corporate jets."
They aren't dropping the Frighten Everyone strategy.
Their whole approach is still stoke and scare—stoke resentment and scare the vulnerable into pressuring Republicans....
It's always the language of zero-sum, of hardship that must be evenly divided, of constriction and accusation.
It's all so frozen, so stuck. Just when America needs a boost, some faith, a breakthrough.
