That’s the description Fortune columnist Allan Sloan, no raging right-winger, offers in his latest piece for the magazine.
Washington is very good at creating things out of thin air. The Federal Reserve has created trillions of dollars that it has used to buy securities in an attempt to hold down interest rates. Congressional Republicans have created numerous reasons why having the federal government default on its debt is a marvelous idea. And now the Obama administration has responded to the national yearning for grownup behavior in Washington by creating bogus bipartisanship.
President Obama did that in his recent speech in Galesburg, Ill., where the White House launched its sales campaign for its economic policies. It was only two sentences of an hour-long speech, but it was a telling example of?how Washington works. Or doesn’t.
Obama said, “I’ve asked Congress to pass a really good, bipartisan idea — one that was championed, by the way, by Mitt Romney’s economic adviser — and this is the idea to give every homeowner the chance to refinance their mortgage while rates are still low so they can save thousands of dollars a year. It would be like a tax cut for families who can refinance.” …
… In fact, it’s a wonderful idea, initially floated in 2008 by Glenn Hubbard, dean of the Columbia Business School, who became a top Romney adviser. But guess what? Two years ago, when the proposal would have helped millions more people than it would now, the administration wanted no part of it.