Bad News: Obama's "Plate is Too Full" to Meet With His...Jobs Council

He's a busy guy, you know:

President Barack Obama’s Jobs Council hasn’t met publicly for six months, even as the issue of job creation dominates the 2012 election. At this point, the hiatus — which reached the half-year mark Tuesday — might be less awkward than an official meeting, given the hornet’s nest of issues that could sting Obama and the council members if the private-sector panel gets together. For starters, there’s the discomfort many business leaders may feel in appearing to embrace the president with his reelection bid in full swing. Then, there’s the fact that some members of the commission have conspicuously declined to endorse him. And that Obama has conspicuously declined to endorse some of their recommendations. And that some of what Obama won’t endorse has been warmly embraced by Republicans, including likely GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. To cap it all off, several of the companies whose CEOs serve on the panel are involved to some extent in outsourcing — a fact that could undercut the ferocious attack Obama and his campaign are mounting on Romney over his alleged ties to the practice.

"Alleged" being the key word there (no actual proof exists, yet the "ferocious attack" continues apace). So with nation suffering under 15 percent real unemployment, and following the slowest job-creation quarter in two years, Obama still can't be bothered to meet with the jobs commission he himself created. Why? Because, as Politico stipulates, it would be pretty awkward. Obama is ignoring their recommendations because he's too busy demonizing those very recommendations on the campaign trail. Consider this fun headline from ABC News: "President to Attack Tax Proposal Also Supported By Members of His Own Jobs and Export Councils." He's also on a rampage against "outsourcing," fabricating charges against Romney while ignoring his own taxpayer-funded outsourcing (see this clip). Several of his commission members run companies that have outsourced American jobs, so meeting with them make for some problematic political optics. Obama defenders will argue that this is just a window-dressing panel anyway, so Obama neglecting them isn't a fair reflection of his commitment to job creation. The problem with that excuse lies -- as is so often the case -- in Obama's own words:

“This has not been a show council. This has been a work council,” Obama declared during the January 2012 session, where the panel presented a report containing more than 60 recommendations aimed at stimulating job creation. “I have been tracking implementation of your recommendations. And we’ve seen substantial progress across the board,” Obama added. “Hopefully, we’ve at least met your expectations in follow-through and implementation; what we haven’t seen is a bunch of white paper sitting on a shelf somewhere collecting dust.”

Unable to frankly state the real reason why Obama has shunned his own jobs council in the midst of a jobs crisis (pure political posturing), the White House has been reduced to this explanation:

There’s no specific reason, except the president has obviously got a lot on his plate, but he continues to solicit and receive advice from numerous folks outside the administration about the economy about ideas that he can act on with Congress or administratively to help the economy grow and help create jobs

Ah yes. This president "has obviously got a lot on his plate." Like the 106 fundraisers he's attended since his jobs council last met. Or the dozens of rounds of golf he's played over the last six months. Or his KissCam exploits with his wife at sporting events. Or his... It's so reassuring that the president has his priorities straight. For his part, Mitt Romney raised this issue during a campaign stop in Ohio this afternoon, noting that the president is most interested "in trying to keep his own job, which is why he's going to lose it" in November:

By the way, here's the study Romney references near the beginning of the clip. American businesses would shed over 700,000 jobs if Barack Obama's unpopular, destructive tax hike is enacted. But the Senate Democrats don't seem to care -- they're skipping merrily toward the fiscal cliff.