Someone needs to alert AttackWatch to a new series of personal attacks from Barack Obama’s critics, this time on the sudden spike of foreclosure notices.  These angry and vicious attacks accuse Obama of being “AWOL” on the mortgage crisis and “irresponsible.”  While the White House tries to claim credit for its mortgage programs, these obviously biased partisans declare those programs to be “abysmal failures.”

Man, someone really needs to start AW dossiers on those House … Democrats?

Leading House Democrats are accusing the Obama administration of ignoring the lingering mortgage crisis and threatening tens-of-millions of Americans with foreclosure in the process.

The lawmakers – encouraged by Obama’s mention of mortgage-relief in his address to Congress last week – were quickly deflated just days later when their efforts to learn the details of the White House plan proved unsuccessful.

“The administration has been AWOL on this issue,” charged Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-Calif.), “and the American people are suffering because of the mismanagement.”

“In my entire political career, I’ve never seen anything this irresponsible,” he added.

Once again, Obama and his team have mastered the art of inflating expectations while failing to deliver.  According to Cardoza, Obama personally promised the Democratic Caucus on June 2nd that he would propose a new, “very significant” housing initiative this month.  When Democrats didn’t hear anything about it for three months, they requested to have Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) head Edward DeMarco speak to them; the White House sent some career staffers from FHFA instead.  And when they discovered that no one at FHFA knew anything about a new housing initiative, Cardoza and his caucus blew up.

Now Cardoza and Elijah Cummings have written a letter to Obama demanding that he make DeMarco available.  Jim Costa ripped Obama’s “contradictory policies” that have extended and deepened the mortgage crisis.  Cardoza offered his own analysis of Obama’s policies:

“I couldn’t wait to get Obama in office because I was sure a Democrat would do a better job,” Cardoza said, referring to the foreclosure-relief efforts under the Bush administration. “And, frankly, nothing’s happened. The programs that were put in place were abysmal failures.”

I’d say we have consensus on that conclusion.  We can extend that to the entire Obama administration, and not just its economic policies but also the ability to work with Congress in any meaningful fashion.  How difficult would it have been to provide DeMarco for a consultation?  For that matter, why promise a housing initiative to a President’s own House caucus and then do no follow-up at all?  Put this together with the embarrassing debacle with Senate Democrats on the jobs bill, and it adds up to an executive who is clearly in over his head, surrounded by people who aren’t much better at their jobs, either.

For the record, the spike in foreclosures isn’t a sign of new weakness in the housing market.  It’s a sign that the normal process of concluding failed loans has finally begun to work again.  These are mainly properties that have been in default for a couple of years or more, but held up because of significant failures to properly handle paperwork by the lenders.  Dumping so many properties onto the market at once might lower prices for a short period, but the defaults have been well known for a long time.