I hope someone asks Jay Carney this:

You, Treasury Secretary Geithner, and other members of your administration have warned that failure to raise the debt ceiling by August 2 will have far-ranging, “catastrophic” effects, including plunging the United States economy into a depression. Nonetheless, you insist that Congress should pass only a debt-ceiling increase that extends beyond the 2012 presidential election; yesterday, you released a statement saying that your senior advisers had counseled you to veto a short-term increase in the debt ceiling. This despite the fact that short-term debt-ceiling increases (i.e., less than a year) are common, having been enacted dozens of times just since the Reagan administration.

Why is a short-term debt-ceiling increase unacceptable now when they’ve been routine and unremarkable in the past?

Presuming for a moment that your veto threat is sincere, shouldn’t Americans logically conclude that you consider winning reelection more important than forestalling an economic catastrophe and throwing millions more Americans out of work?

Do you expect most congressional Republicans to fall for your veto threat and cave? If so, will you please join my Thursday night poker games and bring those Republicans with you?

P.S. I’m glad I’m not Jay Carney. But then, if I were Jay Carney, I’d have never accepted such a fool’s errand as to be spokeshole for this president.

He was bluffing:

After numerous attempts to take his case to the American people, Obama may be chagrined to find that no one’s buying it. That’s what happens when bluffs get called.

I like the comment: “Bluffy the Job Slayer.” Heh.

Has the president ever convinced the American people on anything with his endless speechifying, other than to elect him? He failed on health care, on stimulus, on Libya, and now on this. But they keep doing it, because it’s all they have. As with Clinton, the presidency is an endless campaign to them.

[Update later afternoon]

Is the White House press corps finally catching on to Bluffy?

And so, at long last, we reach the bitterly logical conclusion of O’s debt-ceiling-as-reelection-strategy gambit: Six agonizing minutes of his paid flack playing dumb while reporters ask why, at the eleventh hour and after months of negotiations, the “adult in the room” still hasn’t produced his own formal, score-able proposal. The answer, of course, is that the more he publicly commits to a plan, the easier it is for the GOP to use it against him next year. So he’s doing what any “adult” supervising a group of unruly children would do. He’s sitting back and staying quiet to protect his own precious ass while they fight it out.

I think it’s time for a timeout. And a dunce cap.