Ahead of Obama’s jobs speech, Republicans scoff

Reporting from Washington

The broad outlines of the jobs plan that Obama intends to present to a joint session of Congress on Thursday are already known. On the networks’ Sunday morning talk shows, Republicans dismissed those ideas out of hand, signaling more partisan brawling and less cooperation once the president’s plan is formally presented.

“I think what the president is going to talk about Thursday night is more of the same: extending unemployment benefits, payroll tax cuts, tax credits for hiring people,” said Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“Frankly, I am so tired of his speeches it’s going to be hard for me to watch.”

Democrats and political analysts said that, as much as the ideas Obama puts forth, it’s just as crucial that he project a new, more forceful image to win back a public that has begun to see him as increasingly ineffectual and the country as adrift.

“I think he has to show that he’s willing to take a risk,” said presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“I think what we need now is strength in Washington, strength coming from him,” she said. “I mean, one of the sad things about this whole contretemps about whether he should give it on Wednesday or Thursday night was once again giving in to the Congress when he has to challenge them. I don’t think he has anything to lose by going for broke, going for — he’s got to make people believe in government.”

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, meanwhile, speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” took the Republican narrative of Obama as a weak president a step further, speculating that Hillary Rodham Clinton might have made a better leader.

“She might have been easier for some of us who are critics of the president to work with,” he said, because “she’s one of the more competent members of the current administration and it would be interesting to speculate about how she might perform were she to be president.”

neela.banerjee@latimes.com