Obama in 2010: “Medicare and Medicaid, massive problem down the road…that’s what our children…have to worry about.”

As the demonization of Paul Ryan’s fiscal sanity – or at least mathematical possibility – begins, the Washington Free Beacon offers us this flashback to the Obama of 2010, when he called Ryan’s plan a “serious proposal” and an “entirely legitimate proposal.”

The video:

A couple excerpts:

“Social Security we could probably fix the same way Tip O’Neil and Ronald Reagan sat down together and they could figure something out, that is manageable. Medicare and Medicaid, massive problem down the road. That’s where…that’s gonna be what our children are going to have to worry about.”

Indeed. President Obama later nods agreeably when Ryan mentions Medicare’s $38 trillion unfunded liability and when Ryan uses the words “going bankrupt.” And he himself points out that artificially capping reimbursements to providers is a bad thing. And then, the best part, he says we have to stop demonizing attempts to fix Medicare and Medicaid!

“If we’re going to frame these debates in ways that allow us to solve them, then we can’t start off by figuring out: A, who’s to blame; B, how can we make the American people afraid of the other side? And unfortunately that’s how our politics works right now.”

So. Good, then. We won’t be seeing any of this before the election:

And, say, President Obama, maybe you better tell Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Robert Gibbs.

Hat tip Insty.