Yesterday presidential contender Mitt Romney on a Chicago radio station reacted the president’s road trip and promised speech on jobs, “I think the reason he’s taking the time to wait for his next speech on the economy is that he frankly doesn’t know what to do. I mean, he hasn’t spent his life in the private sector. He doesn’t understand that jobs come and go and he’s looking for help.”
Normally, you’d chalk that up to campaign rhetoric, but in this case Romney has aptly articulated President Obama’s problem. He’s entirely in over his head. With the economy in the dumps and his own approval rating sinking, Obama is panicking and becoming increasingly incoherent in his prescriptions for economic recovery.
We are in a crisis. But the president is going on vacation. We need a pro-jobs agenda fast. But he’s waiting until September to make a speech. We need to curtail the debt, but he’s coming back with another stimulus plan. (Because the first one was such a success in taming unemployment?) He’s previously confessed that there weren’t those shovel-ready jobs, but he’s going to announce plans for roads and construction projects. He acknowledges that employers are struggling so he’s proposing another temporary payroll tax cut. But his big news will be an even grander bargain on the debt with huge new tax hikes.
The bus has been in the works for years. In the past, the Secret Service leased buses for presidential travel, but had to retrofit them to add security measures and enhanced communications. Then the buses would have to be stripped again — "at great expense," White House spokesman Jay Carney said — once they were no longer needed.
Obama's bus sports large, impenetrable windows and flashing blue and red lights like a police cruiser. It was impossible to miss, especially as it roared down two-lane highways en route to small towns along the president's three-day tour. On Tuesday alone, the bus traveled 216 miles.
It has also attracted another kind of attention: Republicans can't stop bringing up its cost, making the bus sound like a boondoggle. In the new age of austerity, a million-dollar bus is an irresistible target — especially because it was built in Canada rather than the U.S.
"This is an outrage that the taxpayers of this country would have to foot the bill so that the campaigner in chief can run around in his Canadian bus and act as if he is interested in creating jobs in our country," Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said Tuesday.
Other conservatives were snarkier. Dana Loesch, a "tea party" activist and CNN contributor, wrote Tuesday on Twitter: "Nothing says, 'Let's tour America and talk about jobs!' than a big, black, hearse mobile of doom."
When the Secret Service decided to order custom-made buses, it wanted a particular model only available from Quebec-based manufacturer Prevost, said Ed Donovan, a spokesman for the agency.
"The vehicle had to support the weight of security and communication equipment that we had," Donovan said in an interview. "Our understanding was that that was the only model that could do it."
Donovan said the Secret Service ordering a custom-built bus gave the agency "a level of security that we couldn't achieve by doing it the other way."
President George W. Bush rode on a bus from the same Canadian manufacturer for a spring 2004 "Yes, America Can" campaign tour through the Midwest.
Donovan said the Secret Service had been using buses since at least 1980, when the agency provided one for President Reagan's travels.
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