Josh Marshall’s people over at TPM have been making hay over the latest Hill flap over Obama’s request for a joint session of Congress to talk about jobs and Boehner’s alleged snub. I think they have buried the lede.

For folks on the Hill and in the establishment media the flap over the speech is far more important than the programs Obama proposes to create jobs. That’s just boring policy stuff to them.

It is a tempest in a teapot, but one of the principles I have learned in working on computer security is that the way a system breaks can tell you a lot about its inner workings. Sometime we deliberately break stuff to try and find out how it works.

According to all the parties concerned Boehner’s office received a request from the White House for the joint session and made no reply. That is a staggering admission for any Speaker’s office to make. A direct request from the President and they didn’t clear the decks to deal with it?

When a journalist calls me for comment on some Internet security flap the first question I ask them is ‘what is your deadline’. Every staffer on the Hill knows that protocol, they didn’t think to ask the President’s staff.

If the Speaker’s story is taken at face value he has a serious problem with the competence of his staff and that in turn raises questions of his own competence. It is clear that the staff had more than 15 minutes notice that the request was going to be made.

As far as the Hill gamesmanship goes, Obama’s message is that the most important issue facing the country right now is jobs and Boehner’s message is that the most important thing is an internal GOP function. Presidential primary debates are a dime a dozen. A joint session of Congress would not be diminished in any way be the absence of two of the nuttiest House members. A presidential primary debate would not be diminished by being moved forward or back by an hour or so.

What this event tells me about Boehner is that he is not very competent and that what he thinks important is himself and his party functions.