Everything's A Prop For The One

Legal Insurrection:

Barack Obama held a question-and-answer meeting with Democratic Senators yesterday to field questions about where the administration is heading on various initiatives. ...

In keeping with Obama's renewed commitment to transparency, the event was televised, much as the Q and A with Republicans was televised a few days ago. ...

The entire event was scripted, with the Senators keeping away from the health care bill during the televised session. Instead, Senators held back on questions about that most pressing issue until the cameras were turned off, Obama had departed, and the doors were closed:

Senate Democrats held back from asking President Barack Obama about healthcare reform during a carefully scripted question-and-answer session in front of television cameras.

With the cameras rolling, a group of senators selected in advance by the Democratic leadership asked questions about such topics as partisan gridlock and GOP obstruction.

But once the president left and reporters were escorted out of the room, senators pressed White House officials about healthcare reform, according to those at the meeting.

Democrats expressed their frustration with the lack of a clear plan for passing healthcare reform, according to one person in the room.

One Democratic Senator even grew heated in his remarks, according to the source.

Everything is a prop for The One, you see.  It doesn't matter who or what, nor the seriousness of the issue, but everything is designed to make Obama look good.  LI has some well-tempered analysis:

The administration used Democratic Senators as props for a phony Q and A session. That would have been bad enough. Then Obama didn't even stay around to deal with what really was on the Senators' minds, the health care bill.

The health care bill is killing Democrats at the polls, yet Obama doesn't have the time or inclination to stick around long enough to hear the Democratic Senators out on the issue, much less do so so the public could see.

It's almost enough to make me feel sorry for the Democrats in the Senate. But then I remember all the nasty comments by Harry Reid, Sheldon Whitehouse, Chuck Schumer, John Kerry and other Democrats in the Senate.

So I'll never get past "almost" feeling sorry. They deserve what they get, and then some.

I'm not as charitable - I have zero sympathy, start to finish.  They deserve far, far worse than what they're dealing with now, for all the pain and damage they've done to this country under his banner.

Still, it raises the interesting question of how long Obama's brazen (ab)use of his own comrades in the Senate -- the SENATE, for crying out loud! -- purely to prop up his own failings will go on.  It would be one thing if there was some collective back-scratching going on, with Obama genuinely helping out his comrades when they needed him, but the reality is that Obama throws them under the bus whenever they become politically inconvenient for him.  Even worse, it seems that every time he campaigns for someone, they lose.  They can read the polls, and they know that he is leading their party into a couple of very destructive election cycles for the sake of his chosen causes.  So how long with the radical Leftist ideology trump self-preservation?  It will be very interesting to watch.

And, on a bigger scale, this should be instructive to anyone who is in a position to work with the administration in any fashion.  Business leaders, CEOs, investors, Wall Street types...all should ask themselves how much genuine concern Obama will have for them if he's willing to throw his own Senate -- the chassis on which his hope-n-change agenda rides -- under the bus at the drop of a hat.

There's my two cents.