The Tan Man Walks

President Obama accomplished something today. He signed the certification of the DADT repeal and the head of Yemen's Al Qaeda branch got iced. Relaxed and cool,he hosted a townhall meeting in Maryland where he explained what he had wanted to do in a debt negotiation.

But the Tan Man didn't return his phone calls last night and by late today sent a letter saying he was walking away from any further negotiations with the White House on raising the debt ceiling. Instead, he said he was picking up the marbles and working with Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell.

Throughout the day I read all the bitter denunciations of Obama from the Left. The man gutted Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security faster than Paul Ryan. He had betrayed everyone. "We elected a symbol but he's only a figurehead." And the beat goes on. By the time of President Obama's press conference,the tide had changed and it was clear that Boehner simply could not agree to increasing any revenues.

Yes, Obama did put $800 billion in cuts in the out years on the table but Boehner could not agree to significant revenue to make the deal. Obama was right--the rumored deal was more favorable to the Republicans than to the Democrats but Boehner didn't have the leadership skills to pull it off.

Boehner looked like a ship wreck. Here was a guy on the verge of either a nervous breakdown or a week long bender. Even the media didn't buy Boehner's statement that Obama changed the goal posts in the negotiations. It was clear that the House caucus simply could not budge on any taxes. Now we're talking about closing loopholes and doing away with very minor tax breaks to corporations. Nothing about ending the Bush tax cuts or oil tax concessions. These were incredibly minor. And, yes, Boehner would have walked away with a major deal but the calculus showed it would benefit Obama politically.

Yesterday, Harry Reid was reported to be furious with Obama on the pending deal saying he had not been consulted. By early morning,it was said that the Reid-McConnell backup plan was on ice. Now it looks like it has to be revised as Boehner claimed that no one wants the United States to default.

Earlier today Obama suggested that his lawyers discouraged him from invoking the 14th amendment and just raising the limit unilaterally. I'm not sure that he has totally ruled that out.

Yesterday Standards and Poors lectured over 40 Republican House members about the implications of a default and their lowering America's rating. We should have sensed something when the White House blasted S&P for suggesting that it wasn't enough to simply raise the debt ceiling but there had to be cuts and revenue in the package. I wonder whether the White House knew all along where this was heading.

Steve Benen has been posting at the Washington Monthly blog several warnings about negotiating with the certifiably insane. It's not simply that either side has different points of view, they inhabit different realities. Benen pointed out that since 1937 the United States has raised the debt ceiling 89 times without any conditions. It has simply been pro-forma. And in many ways, President Obama should have been emphasizing this since the beginning. It was the minority party that held the economy hostage to these negotiations. It is a very simple thing to raise it. You can even do it with a voice vote.


I guess holding the President in contempt like House Republicans do goes over well with their base but I'm not so sure the average American feels the same way. Howard Dean, who says Obama has had a great three weeks, argues that the Republicans scare Americans to death. With the country living in times of economic anxiety, threatening default for the first time in our history unless Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are gutted is not the way to win peoples' hearts and minds. It is absolutely true that every poll taken during this time backs up the proposition that cuts have to be met with increased taxes and Americans are not ready to sacrifice their tattered safety net.


But the Left's absolute distrust of President Obama is amazing also. Paul Krugman called him " Capitulator in Chief", others Herbert Hoover. I liked Bruce Bartlett calling him the democrat's Richard Nixon. Bernie Saunders suggested today that he should be primaried. I received e-mails from unions that Obama was going to slash the Big Three. We heard Ed Shultz complain all week long that Obama was going to throw away the safety net. The only one who seemed amused by the political dance was Lawrence O'Donnell, who still holds that this was a great rope-a-dope--that Obama knew in his heart of hearts that Boehner couldn't make the deal.

I still think Obama did want a large deal because these issues would have been neutralized for 2012 and that he could concentrate on improving the economy. During his townhall meeting, he did indicate that he understood his Keynesian economics when he specifically referred to FDR agreeing to spending cuts in 1937, which put the country back into recession. He also has been clear on what cuts he would not accept in any package. Remember his last "so-called betrayal" of the Left when he negotiated the last budget agreement. It turns out that Boehner's crowing of budget cuts was false, government spending actually rose under that plan. So why believe Obama couldn't negotiate a good deal, preserving the safety net and taking it off the political agenda for years?

In my opinion, John Boehner simply didn't understand the details of the negotiations and its implications for the economy. He has shown this obtuseness before, especially during the global financial meltdown in 2008. He and John McCain literally did not know what was happening. I believe the same applies to these negotiations. He had to give them up because he was getting out-foxed, sensed it and could not go through with a deal he basically didn't understand.

Now for his fellow members in the House caucus, they are economically clueless. Boehner at least believed something had to be done. But the House stands in recess, members cheered and few actually understand the human consequences of their actions. There was literally no way Boehner could sell anything sophisticated to this crowd--especially a deal he himself could not understand.

A conservative e-mailed me an article about how Reagan acted during the period of stagflation and suggested Obama should do the same. Total apples and oranges. Even David Stockman refused to answer Diane Rheim on what Reagan would do because of the different circumstances. But there are similarities between Reagan and Obama and it's not what the Left keeps saying that Obama buys Reaganomics. Both men were cold blooded. Somehow people think the guy who got Bin Laden and took out the Somali pirates will cave to the likes of John Boehner. I don't see it.

Washington is now in the blame game mode. David Brooks ,appearing with Mark Shields this afternoon, thought that Obama shouldn't have slammed the Republicans as hard in his press conference because they will get more stubborn. I am glad he finally did it. Someone had to. We've had people like George Will, who is now non compis mentis, argue that the debt ceiling is Obama's problem. Yet no one in this town takes the Republicans to task for creating the debts we have today. Obama is very little of the problem.

Jim De Mint,Mr. Waterloo, crowed that Obama would cave and be forced to sign something like the Cut, Cap and Balance bill. That went real well in the Senate. When it was tabled by a party vote, DeMint claimed it got within five votes of passing. This is a problem people in this town have begun to realize--the teabagging Republicans simply do not understand the legislative process.


President Obama has already taken this issue to the country and penned an op-ed in USA Today on his views of a reasonable settlement. He even claimed Sean Hannity as agreeing with his views that cuts have to be accompanied by revenues. Sean Hannity immediately argued that Obama didn't hear him correctly and didn't actually write the article. But the wind is going out of the sails of the obstructionists.

President Obama said at his press conference that he would take the responsibility of raising the debt ceiling. He seemed to suggest he now favored Mitch McConnell-Harry Reid's compromise which basically would allow the President to do it unilaterally without Republican votes. My concern is that this plan was originally too complicated to get enacted in time. But it's clear that this is where Boehner was headed in his press conference. He doesn't want any responsibility for this decision.

In the end it will get us where we want but it is an enormous forfeiting of responsibility by a once major party. Today was won by President Obama.

After writing the post. I noticed Paul Krugman's late day blog "Backbone" where he applauds President Obama for his spine and calls for him to invoke the 14th amendment to challenge the debt ceiling law and force the House to impeach him. Naturally, the Washington Post said the situation was lose-lose for everyone.