The Morning News on Fantasy Island: Surely They Do Not Think We Are That Stupid?

They do, and Don’t Call Us Shirley

The President’s advisers have gone on the offensive (pun intended) about the debt ceiling deal and one of them, Gene Sperling has been making the rounds defending the agreement and the President’s role in it. 



Mr. Sperling Upon Hearing
What He Said



Politico reports on Mr. Sperling’s travels

“The president didn’t give one inch,” Gene Sperling, the director of the National Economic Council, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

and in elaboration

“. . . the president made clear, while he was willing to compromise, he was not willing to allow anyone to hold our economy or government hostage by using the threat of default.”

Paul Krugman has written in the New York Times that the President has shown a pattern of caving when dealing with Republicans.  Mr. Sperling commented on that.

After being read what Krugman wrote in The New York Times -- that Obama caved on the Bush tax cuts, the government shutdown and now the deficit -- Sperling replied, "Well, that’s wrong, and wrong, and then, I think, wrong."

"It was the president who stood firm, who didn’t blink on that, and in the end, we have a deal that takes that threat of default off of our political system, off of our economy, into 2013," he said

That Mr. Sperling can make these statements without a near fatal attack of acute embarrassment speaks highly of his qualifications to serve in government.