When Should the President Speak

Yesterday the President sent a formal request to House Speaker John Boehner asking to speak to a joint session of Congress on September 7th. The President would like to deliver a speech about the unemployment crisis and the economy.

This seems like a simple enough request. However these days in Washington nothing is easy. It just so happens that the Republicans have a Presidential debate that evening. The Republicans would not like to not share the spotlight with the President.

Now we have heard in the interim that traditionally these discussions are private and often involve some wrangling and debating back and forth. So the question becomes one of did the administration fail to have a private discussion first with the Speaker. The sides seem to disagree on this. Of course the President might have been trying to upstage the debate. If so it seems odd that he would cave as quickly as he did last evening agreeing to change the speech to September 8th.

Of course September 8th will put the President up against football. Of course the speech is as much about trying to control the debate as it is too actually passing a bill. As was observed on Morning Joe this morning with this much debate about the timing of a speech one can rightly wonder about the eventual success or liklihood of compromiise on the items mentioned in it.