Obama can no longer vote "present."

Jack Caferty desperately tries to absolve President Obama from fault in the Democratic "stimulus" fiasco by blaming Nancy Pelosi. No, Jack, Obama can't vote "present" anymore; he's president and has responsibility for providing real leadership in developing bipartisan support for his stimulus package.

He can no longer abdicate the leadership role and then blame Pelosi or Reid when they shoot themselves in the foot. He may have taken that role as the junior senator from Illinois, but he can't do it as President of the United States of America.

Jack certainly describes the Democrats and their package well: "Acting like children who hadn't seen Santa Claus for eight years, House Democrats busily loaded up the bill with stuff they had been unable to get for eight years. It was payback time." That reality doesn't absolve Obama from his failure of leadership.

Jack also correctly recognizes that Republicans offer the real answer to the economic situation facing the country. The Republicans "want more tax cuts and more real stimulus -- stuff that will create jobs now. Not some pie in the sky proposal that may pay dividends years down the road. And they're right."

Rather than continuing to support the pork laden disaster crafted by House Democrats, Obama needs to provide true leadership in bringing together Republicans and Democrats with a real stimulus package. That package would look like that proposed by Republicans as Jack indicates.

This would require that Obama abandon politics as usual that he seems to be practicing so far. Instead of attacking Republicans and tax rate reductions as the old failed answer, he needs to recognize their effectiveness as shown in prior administrations. He can even invoke John Kennedy's support of tax rate reductions to justify his position.