If Obama has such a marvelous temperament, why can’t he make & advocate “tough choices” on entitlement reform?

When the House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan releases the Republican budget it, unlike that the president prepared, “will deal with entitlements.”

Despite the president’s decision to punt on this matter, even the Senate Democratic leader agrees that entitlements account for the better part of our budget as the indispensable Jennifer Rubin reminds us:

Although the White House has given the suggestion of including taxes and entitlements in the 2011 budget discussions the back of the hand, Reid was at it again: “‘We can’t balance the budget with 12 percent of the budget,’ he said, referring to the size of the non-defense discretionary budget. Reid said that he’s urging Boehner to expand the talks beyond the discretionary budget and include entitlements and revenues.”

Even the president still acknowledges that small cuts hither, thither and yon won’t solve our budget problem, that we need “to have a conversation after we get the short-term budget done about how do we really tackle the problem in a comprehensive way“.  And while he says we need to have that discusion, he hasn’t provided a framework  for doing so.

Now, he was billed in the campaign as having such a marvelous temperament.  Don’t you think such a fellow might be able both to present a budget making those “tough choices” his budget director promised and to explain why he made them to the American people?