WHILE WE FETCH THE SMELLING SALTS FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL'S DELICATE EDITORIALISTS...

I hope the offices of The Wall Street Journal have a comfortable fainting couch, because it seems likely that the paper's editorial writers are prostrate there now while recovering from a very bad case of the vapors:

Did someone move the 2012 election to June 1? We ask because President Obama's extraordinary response to Paul Ryan's budget yesterday -- with its blistering partisanship and multiple distortions -- was the kind Presidents usually outsource to some junior lieutenant. Mr. Obama's fundamentally political document would have been unusual even for a Vice President in the fervor of a campaign....

Yes, they're shocked -- shocked! No president has ever made partisan political assertions in the spring of his third presidential year!

And while the Journal doesn't mention his name, I'm sure we can prove that by seeing what the Greatest of All Presidents, St. Ronald Reagan, was up to at a similar point in his presidency. Surely he would never have delivered a similarly partisan set of remarks! He had too much class!

Er ... um ...

Radio Address to the Nation on a House Budget Proposal
March 19, 1983

... America is on the mend, but this recovery could be stopped dead in its tracks if big spenders in the Congress have their way....

Right now, House liberals are pushing a budget -- the so-called liberal Democratic budget -- that, if implemented, would reverse the progress we've made and wreck our program to rebuild the economy. They want to throw out the window much of the domestic budget savings we've achieved over the last 2 years. And they would go much further, seeking $181 billion in higher domestic spending over the next 5 years, excesses that would send the budget, prices, and interest rates soaring out of control and our economy into a tailspin.

To cite just one example, Medicare would be driven into bankruptcy by the failure of their budget to address its problems....

Now, how do they propose to pay for their reckless binge? Two ways: by compromising America's defense security and by slapping massive new tax increases on every working family. Ignoring the Soviets' tremendous advantage in military forces, the liberals would cripple our efforts to modernize America's defenses. To put it bluntly, their budget gambles with our security and safety....

Well ... um ... that was different. It was different because ... um ... y'know, it just was.