An inci­dent that hap­pened on Fri­day dis­plays the nature of America’s cur­rent polit­i­cal climate.

In a major eco­nomic pol­icy state­ment as part of a press con­fer­ence (watch the state­ment here; go ahead, I’ll wait), Pres­i­dent Obama chided Con­gres­sional Repub­li­cans for declin­ing to move for­ward on job cre­ation. Repub­li­cans in the House and Sen­ate, and Mitt Rom­ney on the cam­paign trail, responded by mis­rep­re­sent­ing the President’s words (that is, by lying about what he said), and so refused to address the under­ly­ing issues.

The state­ment is just over seven min­utes long. The Pres­i­dent spent the first half dis­cussing Europe’s eco­nomic sit­u­a­tion, and Greece’s pos­si­ble exit from the Euro­zone. He touched on how this might affect Amer­ica, and on how Euro­peans are start­ing to real­ize that it’s hard to climb out of an eco­nomic slump if a nation’s econ­omy isn’t growing.

The Pres­i­dent then went on to describe how Amer­ica is doing. After nearly two years of bleed­ing jobs,we’ve now had twenty-​​seven con­sec­u­tive months of private-​​sector job growth. State and local gov­ern­ments, how­ever, have defunded over 450,000 pubic sec­tor jobs. The Pres­i­dent pushed for fed­eral assis­tance to rehire police and fire fight­ers and teach­ers, to engage in infra­struc­ture repair, to assist home­own­ers hav­ing trou­ble with their mort­gages, and to give small busi­nesses a tax break for hir­ing more workers.

He went on to point out that, although we’ve cre­ated 4.3 mil­lion jobs in the last twenty-​​seven months, the recov­ery is not mov­ing fast enough. The Pres­i­dent pro­posed the Amer­i­can Jobs Act last fall, but Repub­li­cans blocked most of it. We need more action, we need more jobs, and we need them now.

It was a call and a chal­lenge, an acknowl­edge­ment of how far we’ve come, and how far we have yet to go. It also was an indict­ment of Repub­li­can obstruc­tion­ism, under­lin­ing the Repub­li­can com­mit­ment to doing noth­ing in the face of the ongo­ing recov­ery efforts.

In answer to a reporter’s ques­tion, Pres­i­dent Obama said,

The truth of the mat­ter is that, as I said, we cre­ated 4.3 mil­lion jobs over the last 27 months, over 800,000 just this year alone.

The pri­vate sec­tor is doing fine. Where we’re see­ing weak­nesses in our econ­omy have to do with state and local gov­ern­ment. Often­times cuts ini­ti­ated by, you know, Gov­er­nors or may­ors who are not get­ting the kind of help that they have in the past from the fed­eral gov­ern­ment and who don’t have the same kind of flex­i­bil­ity as the fed­eral gov­ern­ment in deal­ing with fewer rev­enues com­ing in.

And so, you know, if Repub­li­cans want to be help­ful, if they really want to move for­ward and put peo­ple back to work, what they should be think­ing about is how do we help state and local gov­ern­ments and how do we help the con­struc­tion indus­try? Because the recipes that they’re pro­mot­ing are basi­cally the kinds of poli­cies that would add weak­ness to the — to the econ­omy, would result in fur­ther lay­offs, would not pro­vide relief in the hous­ing mar­ket, and would result, I think most econ­o­mists esti­mate, in lower growth and fewer jobs, not more.

Amaz­ingly, this answer fur­nished a sound­bite to Repub­li­cans, allow­ing them to change the sub­ject, and to attack the Pres­i­dent. Take six words out of con­text, and the pur­pose and thrust and mean­ing of the President’s state­ment, his press con­fer­ence, and the issue of the day, is utterly changed:

“The pri­vate sec­tor is doing fine.”

Clearly, the Pres­i­dent was telling us that the recov­ery is hap­pen­ing — but not fast enough, not far enough, and we need to do more. But Repub­li­can spin is con­sum­ing the media, and the pre­tense is on.

The Pres­i­dent said:

“Where we are see­ing weak­nesses in our econ­omy, had to do with state and local gov­ern­ment, often times cuts ini­ti­ated by gov­er­nors or may­ors who are not get­ting the kind of help that they have in the past from the fed­eral Gov­ern­ment, and who don’t have the same flex­i­bil­ity as the fed­eral gov­ern­ment in deal­ing with fewer rev­enues com­ing in,”

The only thing Repub­li­cans heard (or so they claim) is, “The pri­vate sec­tor is doing fine.”

Rom­ney spokesman Ryan Williams said:

Today, Pres­i­dent Obama inex­plic­a­bly claimed that ‘the pri­vate sec­tor is doing fine.’ But the 23 mil­lion Amer­i­cans who are strug­gling for work are not ‘doing fine.’ Job cre­ators and small busi­nesses are not ‘doing fine.’ The mid­dle class is not ‘doing fine.’ There is no deny­ing that Pres­i­dent Obama has been fun­da­men­tally hos­tile to job cre­ators and his poli­cies have pre­vented our econ­omy from rebound­ing. Amer­ica needs a pres­i­dent who under­stands the econ­omy and knows how to get our coun­try back on track.

Mitt Rom­ney asked, “Is he really that out of touch?” He went on to say the Pres­i­dent was “defin­ing what it means to be detached and out of touch with the Amer­i­can peo­ple.” He said the com­ment “is going to go down in his­tory as an extra­or­di­nary mis­cal­cu­la­tion and mis­un­der­stand­ing.” John Boehner, Eric Can­tor, and oth­ers, have also weighed in, accus­ing the Pres­i­dent of being “out of touch” and of not real­iz­ing that peo­ple out of work are not “doing just fine.”

The Pres­i­dent has had to “clar­ify”, and has even been said to be “back­track­ing” on his orig­i­nal remark.

Have you caught what’s going on? We aren’t talk­ing about how Repub­li­cans are pre­vent­ing the cre­ation of new jobs. By tak­ing six words out of con­text, and by pre­tend­ing that was all Pres­i­dent Obama said, Repub­li­cans have effec­tively changed the subject.

But let’s take them at their word. Let’s pre­tend Repub­li­cans really are so stu­pid that their atten­tion span lasts six words. They’re com­plain­ing that the Pres­i­dent, not under­stand­ing that there are still peo­ple out of work, isn’t doing any­thing to help them.

For instance, we need a jobs plan. Like the one Repub­li­cans refused to enact last fall.

Appar­ently, pro­fes­sional Repub­li­cans are hop­ing Amer­i­cans are also stu­pid enough to have an atten­tion span that lasts six words. They hope we won’t under­stand that the mes­sage the Pres­i­dent gave on Fri­day was the oppo­site of what Rom­ney and Boehner and Can­tor are claim­ing. They hope we won’t notice that the peo­ple who are stand­ing in the way of faster recov­ery — the peo­ple who threw 450,000 pub­lic employ­ees out of work — the peo­ple who refuse to dis­cuss ways of actu­ally cre­at­ing more jobs — are the Republicans.

On the one hand, we have a Pres­i­dent who is des­per­ately try­ing to put Amer­i­cans back to work, and who is point­ing out how far we’ve come, and how far we have left to go, and what we have to do to get there. On the other hand is an oppo­si­tion party addicted to half-​​truths, out­right false­hoods, and doing any­thing in their power to play polit­i­cal games rather than do any­thing that would help the nation.

What hap­pened Fri­day dis­plays the nature of America’s cur­rent polit­i­cal climate.

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