GIBBS REMARKS: LIKE MUCH FROM THIS WHITE HOUSE, TARDY AND INADEQUATE

The Robert Gibbs story isn't going away, and I think Politico's Roger Simon is right about this, though he doesn't flesh it out:

...I'm guessing the president agrees with Gibbs and was neither angered nor disappointed by Gibbs's statements, which came not in the heat of his daily briefing but in the cool of his West Wing office.

In other words, Gibbs knew what he was doing. And so did Obama....

But what was he doing? Well, he was trying to get us to rise to the bait, so midterm voters might begin to question whether all this talk they hear about the Big Commie Obama really makes sense. If the left is fighting with Obama, how can he be the evil lefty Fox and Limbaugh say he is?

This might have been cynically brilliant -- if it hadn't come only after a billion hours of TV and radio propaganda meant to persuade voters (swing voters as well as base voters) that Obama really is a big lefty. You think a three-day story in the online political Net-sphere is going to offset all that? Really?

Well, Obama's stimulus was too weak. His response to the oil spill started too late. This cynical ploy seems too weak and too late. If the cynics in the White House (including the Cynic in Chief) really thought it was shrewd to make a big show of fighting with the left, they probably should have done it a long time ago, and made an even bigger deal of it.