Bob Woodward, Village Court Jester

Its really sad what's become of Bob Woodward since his Watergate days.  He's become the official Court Jester of the Village:

Obama's Sequester Deal Changer

There was an insistence on the part of republicans in congress for there to be some automatic trigger, Lew said while campaigning in Florida.  It was "very much rooted in the Republican congressional insistence that there be an automatic measure.

The President and (Budget Director Jack) Lew had this wrong.  My extensive reporting for my book "The Price of Politics" shows that the automatic spending cuts were initiated by the White House and were the brainchild of Lew and White House Congressional Relations chief Ron Nabors - probably the foremost experts on budget issues in the senior ranks of the federal government.

<snip> 

A majority of republicans did vote for the Budget Control Act that summer, which included the sequester.  Key republican staffers said they didn't even initially know what a sequester was - because the concept stemmed from the budget wars of the 1980s, when they were not in government.

Seriously, is that the best you can do, Bob?  The poor dears weren't alive then, so they couldn't tell their leaders what it was, and thus the republicans were somehow snookered into voting for the sequester.  Damn.

Woodward is just dead wrong on the basic fact of who wanted the sequester.  The GOP "budget wonk" and long distance record holder Paul Ryan (R- WI), House Budget Committee Chairman crowed about the republicans getting the sequester into the Budget Control Act.  Then there's this:

The PowerPoint That Proves Its Not Obama's Sequester After All

Sets up a new sequestration process to cut spending across the board - and ensure that any debt limit increase is met with greater spending cuts -- IF Joint Committee fails to achieve at least $1.2T and the deficit reduction enacted as a result of Joint Committee.

Read the other bullet points and its clear that, what the republicans proposed in the presentation IS the damned sequester, lock, stock and barrel.  If you are doing research for a book where you'll discuss the budget shenanigans between Obama and the GOP, you couldn't not know about this and still lay claim to being a competent reporter, let alone the "insider" Woodward never ceases to remind us he is.

Woodward is giving the Villagers what they want, the false equivalence of "both sides" always being to blame for whatever goes wrong in "Washington" with democrats as "the grown ups" ultimately being responsible for whatever tantrums the spoiled children of the GOP are throwing.

Doing his best in a silly effort to entertain the villagers, Woodward focuses in on blaming Obama for the sequester, when it really doesn't matter who proposed it; the congressional republicans voted for it, making it law.  But as Woodward refuses to "report," the republicans not only wanted it, it was their brainchild.

In the end, the media focus on who owns the sequester is just a ridiculous dodge.  The focus needs to be on how we can move forward without unnecessarily blowing up the damned economy.