A make or break speech for Obama

I love the back-to-back columns on the Bush tax cuts and fiscal responsibility that Clive Crook of the Financial Times wrote earlier this month.  He really tells it like it is: we simply can’t afford to permanently extend even the so-called “middle-class” portions of the Bush tax cuts–for several reasons.

The Los Angeles times notes Obama, chart in hand, presses his case on gas prices As rising gas prices are putting pressure on politicians to act, President Obama called on Congress to vote quickly to eliminate subsidies for the oil industry, returning to a favorite target the president.

Big tax cuts enacted during George Bush’s presidency are due to expire at the end of the year. Democrats want to make most of them permanent. Republicans want to make all of them permanent. With both sides seeking maximum advantage, gridlock is a distinct possibility – which would mean a swingeing tax increase with the economy still on its knees. Clive Crook calls on Obama to show leadership

Paul Krugman observes: Not Everything Is Political: Clive Crook demands that I engage respectfully with reasonable people on the other side, but somehow fails to offer even one example of such a person. Not long ago Crook was offering Paul Ryan as an exemplar of serious, honest conservatism, while I was shrilly declaring Ryan a con man. But I suspect that even Crook now admits, at least to himself, that Ryan is indeed a con man…

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps? Clive Crook is unhappy because Paul Krugman does not take him and his ilk of opinions-of-shape-of-earth-differites seriously:

The media was both a prime target and a subject of praise for President Barack Obama during his speech at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner on Saturday, as he took shots at the press while praising it for its coverage of a recent flurry of news.

My big hope is that Barack Obama opens tonight's State of the Union by saying, "You want the State of the Union?