Carville: Obama Wrong to Schedule Speech During Debate

The White House was out of bounds when it scheduled a presidential address to Congress at the same time as the Sept. 7 Republican presidential debate, Democratic strategist James Carville said today on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

“I do think this is a really big debate, and I think the White House was out of bounds . . . in trying to schedule a speech during a debate,” Carville said.

Given a “choice between watching a debate and the speech, I would have watched the debate and I’m not even a Republican or even close to being a Republican,” he said.

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After a couple of hours of controversy Wednesday when the White House announced that the president’s jobs speech would take place at the same time as the GOP debate, Obama backed off and said he would deliver his jobs proposals to Congress on the following night.

Carville also predicted that the GOP debate, the first to include Texas Gov. Rick Perry, would be a “barn burner.”

As to President Barack Obama’s jobs speech, the ABC News consultant said whatever is proposed won’t make it through Congress.

“Just go out and just document it, it’s not so much that the speech is important . . . it’s the follow up after the speech,” he said. “And this is going to have to be what they are going to run the 2012 campaign on . . . this Congress is not going to pass anything that the president proposes, that is pretty clear.”

As for the new speech time, after it caused concern that Obama’s address would trample all over the NFL’s opening game between the Green Bay Packers and the New Orleans Saints, the White House apparently has settled on a time of 7:30 p.m. Eastern, according to NBC Sports.

The game might be a real barn burner.