Out-of-Touch Obama in a Wintour Wonderland

Where would President Obama get an outrageous idea like “the private sector is doing fine?” Perhaps from one of his many star-studded fundraisers.

Celebrities are regulars at Obama events. Tonight, it’s Vogue magazine editor Anna Wintour welcoming the President to actress Sarah Jessica Parker’s New York City home. The glitzy gala is fundraiser number 162 for Obama since he declared reelection, roughly twice the number of fundraisers President Bush had attended at this point in his reelection campaign.

When being feted by a fashionista on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, or when courting celebrities in Hollywood, it’s easy to forget the economic hardships facing the rest of the country–the 23 million Americans struggling for work, the shrinking wages of the middle class, the chronically high unemployment rate, the rising prices at the grocery store.

Traveling the celebrity cocktail circuit also leaves little time for developing sound economic policy. Today, the president will give a speech on the economy, but he’s unlikely to offer new ideas. As Fox News White House correspondent Ed Henry reported yesterday, the president “is not expected to offer new jobs proposals.” It’s just another speech.

For three and half years, President Obama has peddled the same big government ideas. More spending and more borrowing is the answer to our economic woes, he believes. He wants more government because, after all, he thinks “the private sector is doing fine.”

He’s out-of-touch with reality. The truth is, the private sector is far from fine, and it’s precisely because he’s pursued big government policies since taking office. The stimulus racked up debt. ObamaCare kills jobs. Excessive regulations crush free enterprise.

The president has his priorities all backward. He puts growing government ahead of growing the economy, his job above American jobs, and celebrity galas above presidential duties.

It was less than two weeks ago that we received the grim news that unemployment went up last month. That very day, the Obama campaign released an ad promoting today’s gala with Anna Wintour. The timing led ABC’s Terry Moran to comment, “There just seems to be something tone deaf about the Obama campaign’s decision, at the very moment unemployment is again on the rise, to enlist Madame Wintour as one of the hostesses of his fundraiser.”

Tone-deafness has become an Obama trademark as of late. Even Democrat James Carville has castigated the White House for it. He’s “worried” about the president’s message on the economy.

The message, according to the president himself, is that we’re making “progress.” With the recent uptick in unemployment, he certainly didn’t hear that from middle class Americans. Maybe he heard it from Anna Wintour.