Mr. Irrelevant, the man formerly known as president, was in France when news came that the Senate unanimously rejected the Jerry Lewis gag budget that the administration submitted to Congress in February.
The vote was 0-97 against, with three Senators voting "not present."
Can you blame them?
If John Kerry's misshapen theme was "Reporting for Duty," Obama's is: "I'm AWOL: Ha. Ha. Ha. You can't catch me."
If Kerry's presidency was still-born, Obama's died of crib-death.
Can you imagine any other president in history being satisfied with sending up a budget that couldn't muster even one vote from his own party?
It's fitting that Obama got the news of the vote while in France, a country also well known for giving up without a fight. On the budget, the administration was hors de combat, to borrow the French term for being irrelevant, after being outflanked on the budget by the GOP and the mood of the people.
On the Right, the budget was panned for adding over a trillion-and-a-half to the deficit just next year; on the Left, the budget was ripped for reducing spending on community organizing.
"Less than two months after signing tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans into law," reported the Huffington Post in February, "President Barack Obama proposed a spending plan to Congress that cuts funding to programs that assist the working poor, help the needy heat their homes, and expand access to graduate-level education, undermining the kind of community-based organizations that helped Obama launch his political career in Chicago."
One can almost feel filmmaker, author and all-around socialist, Michael Moo- re, adding exclamation points to the HuffPost's story!!!
During Mr. Irrelevant's European tour, three others added their vote of no confidence to Obama's absentee, slum-lord presidency.
The Queen Mother, who knows something about dealing with celebrity, finally got some payback on Obama after a series of very public snubs of the UK- our mightiest, best ally- during Mr. Irrelevant's term of office.
The Queen voted "not present" by having her band play God Save the Queen over Obama's toast to her, which the Washington Post reported under the headline Burnt Toast. No one knows how to do an understated snub as well as the Royal Family.
Even ABC News called the moment "awkward."
It took a little gloss off another sequel to National Lampoon's Obama Vacation, just like that "awkward" Japanese tsunami did when he traveled to Brazil.
Out-going defense secretary Robert Gates then took his turn, warning that Obama's budget would cut the military to levels that could encourage more violence against the US.
"But make no mistake," Gates said at Notre Dame, according to the Wall Street Journal, "the ultimate guarantee against the success of aggressors, dictators and terrorists in the 21st century, as in the 20th, is hard power—the size, strength and global reach of the United States military."
"If you cut the defense budget by 10%, which would be catastrophic in terms of force structure, that's $55 billion out of a $1.4 trillion deficit," Gates told the Journal last year. "We are not the problem," he concluded about America's budget problems, in direct contradiction to the commander-in-chief.
Gates, who has presided over defense reductions already, is speaking out about further budget cuts while engaged in his farewell tour as secretary of defense.
Then they guy who is still the de facto Democrat President of the United States, Bill Clinton, did the job Obama is supposed to be doing. Obama thus far has outsourced budget negotiations to his rent collector and vice president, Joe Biden.
So Clinton spoke up forcefully last week for a compromise on Social Security and Medicare reform, warning that Democrats should resist the urge to gain short term points with seniors by using scare tactics. Instead, Clinton took a novel approach, suggesting that Democrats stop playing politics and get those two entitlements under control.
"The Democrats are going to have to be willing to give up maybe some short-term political gain by whipping up fears on some of these things if it's a reasonable Social Security proposal or a reasonable Medicare proposal," Clinton said at a bipartisan debt forum in Washington according to FoxNews. "We have to deal with these things. You cannot have healthcare devour the economy."
At a forum on the national debt, Clinton even told House GOP Budget Chair Paul Ryan to give him a call if he wanted talk about fixing Medicare.
Mr. Irrelevant has become so irrelevant that he doesn't even seem to know that he's being disrespected.
While Obama toured Europe, stumping for the electoral votes of Irish counties Cork and Offaly, along with the all-important endorsement from the head of the IMF, there's been a quiet bipartisan effort to make the presidency relevant again.
Shush, though.
Let's no one tell him until after Hillary's in the race.
