Mr McConnell: Rebuild This Bridge!

Usually I hate it when President Obama channels Ronald Reagan as if he were worthy of emulating, instead of a war criminal. But on this one, I give him a pass. Because it's just so delicious.

From the Herald:

Standing before an aging bridge that links the home turf of top Republicans in Congress, President Barack Obama touted his $447 billion jobs bill Thursday as a way to help repair the nation’s infrastructure.

Obama called out by name Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, as he spoke near the Brent Spence Bridge that carries I-75 and I-71 over the Ohio River.

“Mr. Boehner, Mr. McConnell, help us rebuild this bridge,” Obama said. “Help us rebuild America. Help us put this country back to work. Pass this jobs bill right away.”

It amounted to one of Obama’s most direct and defiant challenges to leaders of the opposition party. And the incursion into the Republicans’ territory illustrated a new White House aggression and a desire by the president’s advisers to distinguish him from Republicans and to get them to share some of the blame for the struggling economy.

Obama joked that it was “just coincidental” that he came to the bridge in the backyards of McConnell and Boehner.

He noted that one of four bridges in Boehner’s district is substandard and that McConnell has called for better infrastructure, but they have refused to endorse his plan.

For the geography-impaired, I should explain that for the entire 600-mile-plus northern border of Kentucky, there is no way to cross the border from Kentucky except by bridge - unless you want to swim the Ohio River. Hundreds of thousands of people commute to work across the river every day. There are bridges across the river from Kentucky at South Shore, Cincinnati, Louisville, Owensboro, Henderson and Paducah, but they're all in the same shape: old, decrepit and trembling under double the traffic they were designed to carry.