Boehner was on the defensive for his nuking an ant statement.

He should have said something like this:

I’m sorry for mispeaking. My teleprompter was broken that day, and so I was speaking with my mind and heart as my guide. And I ended up using a metaphor that only half-conveyed the idea I was trying express. Which is that this reform is a spreader bar on our financial sector when our economy is already bound and shackled and gagged. As esteemed Richard Posner has written,

“The most sensible legislative response to the financial collapse of September 2008 would have been to do nothing until the causes of the collapse were fully understood.

There is no urgency about legislating financial regulatory reform. The existing regulatory agencies have virtually total authority over the financial industry. And because they were asleep at the switch when disaster struck, they are now hyper- alert to prevent a repetition of it. Indeed, bank examiners have become so fearful of condoning risky practices that they are making it difficult for banks to lend to small businesses and consumers and thus are retarding the economic recovery.”

So I didn’t mean to suggest that the ongoing financial crises he is presiding over are small. Far from it. He never does talk to me, but if he had called, I would have been happy to explain in any amount of detail my concerns.

So instead, he loaded onto his teleprompter a political attack that is based on a mischaracterization of my position. I just want to know at one point Obama realized this mistake. Or whether he knew it was a mistake when he said it.

Of course, this demonstrates that Obama isn’t the post-partisan unifier he claimed to be in his campaign commercials. Who is the real Obama? The one who claims to believe in the free market, or the one who pretends his stimulus bill is a success?