I’m not sure how I’m supposed to take today’s column by Ruth Marcus, Panetta Rebukes Obama’s Handling of Shutdown. My experience is that when I read something so intellectually oafish that it must be satire, it turns out to not be satire. It is a thing to behold. Now that Leon Panetta is not in the government, he has entered the fray to explain to the world that there is “enough blame to go around.”

The whole article is about how Panetta thinks that if only Obama had shown “leadership” then we wouldn’t be in this mess. Ah yes! The vaunted “leadership.” That fairy dust that Obama is supposed to sprinkle into the eyes of John Boehner and make everything better. This kind of Chris Matthews’ thinking is complete nonsense. As Ezra Klein reported earlier this year in The New Yorker, when presidents get associated with specific policies, it makes it harder to push those policies, not easier.

Just look at Obamacare. Does any serious person think that the Republicans are against the new healthcare law on its merits? If John McCain had been elected in 2008, we would have more or less Obamacare and the Republicans would be thrilled about it. The Republicans hate it today because it is Obama’s healthcare law. It’s as simple as that.

So the idea that Panetta (along with, it seems, Marcus) thinks that Obama could have avoided a government shutdown if he had just been more involved is pure fantasy. A reporter asked him how Clinton would have dealt with the situation. Panetta responded, “Some of us were nervous that Bill Clinton was bending over backwards to try to see if he could get a deal.” So Clinton really worked hard to get a deal. He bent over backwards. And how did that end? Oh, I remember: it ended with a 21 day government shutdown. So Clinton’s great leadership skills accomplished absolutely nothing. Too bad Obama didn’t follow in his footsteps. If he had, we might only be in the middle of a government shutdown.

Panetta said that if Obama couldn’t manage the shutdown, he should find someone who could. Marcus sounded like a schoolgirl when she gushed:

See what I was saying about satire? That’s just embarrassing. So we have an old politician who is talking nonsense and a reporter who thinks he is just the bee’s knees. Someone please make this stop.