The Washington Post editors notice that the economy is a mess and getting worse. And they sound miffed:

And yet for the past several days, Washington has been consumed by the point-scoring possibilities of a flap over commentator Rush Limbaugh. It is almost unbelievable that grown men and women in government, of either party, are spending time and energy on this. The whole world is watching, counting on Washington for leadership. The president and lawmakers of both parties must provide it.

Let’s put aside the naked hypocrisy for a moment and ignore the number of stories the Post ran on this subject, (and on page one no less). The editors use a passive voice — “Washington has been consumed” — which deserves further scrutiny.  Wasn’t it Obama’s political hit men who cooked up the scheme to Limbaugh-ize the GOP? Wasn’t it Gibbs and Rahm Emanuel who egged on reporters? It is not the Republicans who are claiming Limbaugh should be crowned head of the party. To the contrary the GOP’s elected leaders have been imploring the media to get back to the economy, the grotesque omnibus spending bill, and, frankly, the president’s cluelessness about the market crash.

So if they had wanted to be accurate, the editors should have written:

And yet for the past several days, the Obama administration has been consumed by the point-scoring possibilities of a flap over commentator Rush Limbaugh. It is almost unbelievable that grown men and women in government, are spending time and energy on this. The whole world is watching, counting on Washington for leadership. The president and lawmakers of both parties must provide it.

That’s plainly what is going on. Obama’s bear market, the embarrassing budget, spend-a-thons, and the beginnings of Red state senators’ defections from the Obama agenda are not what the Obama administration wants people to think about. So they cooked up what even the Post concludes is  a juvenile and “counterproductive” (Gibbs words) plot. (The Post’s own Jackson Diehl has it exactly right.)

In the era of responsibility, we should be clear about who is responsible for this one. It does the Post’s readers no good to mask the White House’s culpability here.  And, yes, it is “unbelievable” that this is what the White House is spending its energy on.