It’s Not that the White House Lies Even to Itself…

It’s that they are so bad at it.

At least they made clear that Glenn Greenwald was correct when he said the deal is exactly what Obama wanted:

Fact: President Obama laid out key priorities that had to be part of any deal. Those priorities are reflected in this compromise.…the initial down payment on deficit reductions does not cut low-income and safety-net programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Third, we set up a path forward that will put pressure on Congress to adopt a balanced approach. And finally, we raised the debt ceiling until 2013, ensuring that House Republicans could not use the threat of default in just a few months to force severe cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. [emphasis theirs]

Uh, yeah, about that “we protect Medicare shtick.” Maybe you should try actually saying that in public, or in negotiations.

And they play with straw men:

when push came to shove, Republicans backed down on their key demands. For months, Republicans called for a budget that would have ended Medicare as we know it, made catastrophic cuts to Medicaid, or cut investments in education by 25 percent, clean energy by 70 percent and infrastructure spending by 30 percent. As if that wasn’t enough, they also demanded that we repeat this debt-ceiling crisis, just a few months from now.

Gosh, I feel so “protected” now. Instead, the White House agreed to cut education loans, sidebarred the EPA discussion until they can lose that (h/t Mark Thoma) (having already surrendered on a “market-based” energy solution), and had Goolsbee lying to Jon Stewart last night about how there will be a National Infrastructure Alliance that will work in the same manner as TARP.

With friends like this, who needs enemies?

In a related aside, Dow 3,600 anyone?