Time magazine's Joe Klein said this weekend that President Obama "is winning" the debt ceiling debate.
Klein told his fellow panelists on the syndicated "Chris Matthews Show," "He is coming across as the most reasonable guy in a crazy city...When he says things like 'Eat your peas,' that's language Americans can understand" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
JOE KLEIN, TIME: Can I just say - he's winning this thing. I mean really. He is coming across as the most reasonable guy…
CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Because?
KLEIN: …in a crazy city.
MATTHEWS: How so?
KLEIN: Because he seems reasonable.
GLORIA BORGER, CNN: He put a deal on the table.
KELLY O’DONNELL, NBC NEWS: People do like that.
KLEIN: The real important thing to understand about the whole debt ceiling business is that no one in America really knows what it means and they care less about it. They care about the economy and jobs.
BORGER: Well, they care about Social Security.
KLEIN: He seems to be a guy who's trying to do, well they don't understand that's a consequence. They didn't understand it until this week.
MATTHEWS: It's coming.
Oh yeah - Obama looked so good telling Republicans, "Eat your peas."
That's language Americans can understand, especially coming weeks after he told them his young daughters behave better than they do.
I guess to a shill like Klein, that's coming across as "reasonable" - talking to political leaders on the other side of the aisle like they're children.
Somehow I doubt Klein would be so approving of a Republican president talking this way to Democrats.
