Obama’s first step in that campaign will be to maximize the amount of pain the sequester inflicts on the American people. ABC News reports: “Now that the sequester has gone into effect — bringing on the spending cuts Obama once guaranteed would never happen — the president is in the awkward place of rooting for it be felt as he and his administration has predicted.”

For perhaps the first time in the history of the United States, it is in the political interest of a president to inflict maximum pain on the American people. Obama could have spent the last 16 months preparing to mitigate sequestration’s impact on the American people, as any responsible manager would have. Instead, he has done the opposite, explicitly ordering government agencies not to prepare for the worst. And he has refused all Republican efforts to pass legislation that would minimize the sequester’s pain.