A startingly listless President Obama appeared in the White House press room yesterday morning, spoke some dull preliminaries about the European financial crisis — and then slipped and tumbled headfirst into re-election quicksand from which he will find it very difficult to extricate himself.
Now, it is not the case that the president is finished because he said, “The private sector is doing fine” — even though those were the very words he spoke yesterday, the week after a jump in the unemployment rate and a downward revision of the GDP.
It’s just one quote, after all, and a lot can happen in five months. And while it’s inarguably a huge gift to the Romney campaign — one worth approximately three George Clooneys and six Sarah Jessica Parkers — the president’s rival is certainly capable of making blunders that will hand back some of the advantage.
No, “The private sector is doing fine” may prove to be the pivotal moment for the 2012 campaign because of what it demonstrates about the president’s ideas as he heads into the fight of his life.
Indeed.