No professor likes to be criticized.
President Obama found that out when he went on MSNBC this week to scold Bay State U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren in a rare liberal-on-liberal smackdown.
For once I agree with Elizabeth Warren.
Warren made a career of taking on Wall Street and now she is taking on Obama over his 12-country trade deal. She has demanded that he release this sealed deal so the public knows what he is asking members of Congress to approve.
Obama said Warren and other opponents of the bill have their facts wrong. Yet, lawmakers are not allowed to speak publicly about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement with 12 nations, including Australia, Canada and Japan.
“When you hear folks make a lot of suggestions about how bad this trade deal is, when you dig into the facts, they are wrong,” Obama said.
Yet Americans are not allowed to review the facts?
Warren said, via her website: “The government doesn’t want you to read this massive new trade agreement. It’s top secret ... Why? Here’s the real answer people have given me: ‘We can’t make this deal public because if the American people saw what was in it, they would be opposed to it.’
“If the American people would be opposed to a trade agreement if they saw it, then that agreement should not become the law of the United States,” Warren added.
The president has given the American public little reason to trust him, considering he stumbled with Obamacare — you can’t keep your coverage if you like it — the IRS and the Benghazi attacks.
Some in the media complain there has never been a more secretive administration in history than the current one. The Associated Press has reported on the long wait times associated with Freedom of Information Act requests submitted to the Obama administration.
And we still don’t exactly know all the fine print on the deal brokered with Iran regarding nuclear weapons. All we know is the facts released contradict what the Iranian government is telling their citizens.
The president’s own party is fed up with his closed-door form of governing and I credit Senator Warren for calling him out.
Obama certainly poked the hornet’s nest when he told the cable TV audience she was “wrong.”
In return, the professor threw the book at him. I’d like to see more of that coming from the left.
Jaclyn Cashman co-hosts “Morning Meeting” from 9am to noon on Boston Herald Radio. Follow her on Twitter at @JaclynCashman.
No professor likes to be criticized.
