With regard to the U.S.’s loss of its AAA credit rating, the Obama administration seems to be doing what it always does when things don’t go its way–blaming somebody else. Or pretending it didn’t happen. Guess what the president didn’t mention Saturday in his radio address? 


Ignore it or blame somebody else–that’s the Obama administration’s way of doing business.


Predictably, the administration angrily blamed S&P, the rating company, for the downgrade. Well, that should do the trick. Let’s make S&P really, really mad.   


Obama strategist David Axelrod blamed-you guessed it-the tea party (along with other luminaries such as Senator John Kerry):



This was a “tea party downgrade,” said Axelrod on CBS News’ Face the Nation.


The tea party movement was only about a year old when it came to the fore during the 2010 midterms. To have destroyed the credit rating of a 222-year old country in so short a time is nothing short of miraculous. It would have to be the most potent force on the face of the earth.


But was the tea party to blame? It did seem to be playing Russian Roulette at times during the debt ceiling debate. Abe Greenwald has a good analysis:



That the debate in Congress was messy doesn’t mean one side wasn’t right. If you think the Tea Party was reckless, consider the nonchalance of Barack Obama. On July 14, S&P issued a report spelling out-in plainest English-what it would take to secure our credit-rating: “If Congress and the Administration reach an agreement of about $4 trillion [in cuts], and if we … conclude that such an agreement would be enacted and maintained throughout the decade, we could, other things unchanged, affirm the ‘AAA’ long-term rating and A-1+ short-term ratings on the U.S.” The very next day, Obama held a press conference at which he assured the American people, “It turns out we don’t have to do anything radical to solve the problem.” Not only did the great pragmatist have no plan; he didn’t know he needed one.



That was the press conference during which Obama was all smiles and joked about his hope-and-change campaign. It was the last time we saw him in a good mood because the rest of Washington would soon grasp the point he missed, and that killed all his fun. If Obama couldn’t do it his way, he wasn’t interested, so he exited the debate and left Congress trying to stave off the inevitable. It should be no surprise that yesterday, one day after S&P made good on its word, Obama delivered his weekly address and said absolutely nothing about the downgrade. The threat wasn’t a problem for our president and neither is the reality.



Now, thanks to S&P, the rest of the country may grasp the magnitude of the change that’s needed. …


It is odd and adolescent that the response of this administration is always one of trying to escape blame.  This makes as much sense as trying to solve our unemployment problem by sending the president on a bus tour of the Midwest, where, presumably, he will talk at the unemployment rate.