Left-leaning author and editorialist Bob Woodward ’s recent criticisms of the Obama administration’s role in precipitating the sequestration debacle resulted in a response from National Economic Council director Gene Sperling.  While Woodward suggested on a television talk show that Sperling had threatened him in an email, subsequent revelations called that assertion into question.  While Woodward should be more careful, it is interesting how quickly the forces of the left turned on one of their own.  Woodward’s op ed piece in the Washington Post was brief, but elicited quite a fire storm from administration supporters and many in the mainstream news.  The National Review noted that reporters took to Twitter calling Woodward  “senile” and suggesting he had “lost it.”  While Woodward cannot justify portraying Sperling’s remarks as threatening (the email discourse was rather congenial), Woodward may know better than the journalistic hacks just who is bordering on senility.  Woodward responded to the President’s assertion that he would not be able to deploy an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf because of the sequestration by saying “That’s a kind of madness that I haven’t seen in a long time.”

Given that the sequester is a slowing of the growth of government spending, it is hard to imagine that it would result in something as dramatic as the country not being able to maintain a strong presence in one of the most vitally strategic and most unstable regions of the world.  Threatening a reduction in our effort to maintain national security to strong arm Republicans in Congress is a methodology that defies rational justification.

But then “madness” has come to define the whole sequester ballyhoo.  California Democratic Representative Maxine Waters warned that 170 million jobs would be lost as a result of the sequestration.  That would be about 40 million more jobs than there are workers in America.  Rep. Water’s staff did damage control thereafter reducing the number at least twice.  Waters has a long history of such outlandish statements dating back at least as far as the Rodney King incident.  But it is worth noting that Waters is the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee and should be a little more on top of her numbers.  Regardless, it is indicative of the political atmosphere in Washington, DC, and both sides of the aisle would do well to start speaking the truth.  Until they do, the madness will continue.