The Debt-Ceiling Showdown Is the Fight of Obama’s Life

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/09/debt-ceiling-showdown-the-fight-of-obamas-life.html

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The debt-ceiling showdown has snuck up quietly on Washington and is barely registering in the broader economy. Nobody is quite sure what to make of it. A familiar Washington Kabuki dance? A white-knuckle bond market tightrope walk? A final reactionary howl at the onset of Obamacare? It may be these things, but it’s also something much larger: a Constitutional struggle, a kind of quasi-impeachment, that will test Obama’s mettle and, next to his reelection campaign, poses the most singular threat to his presidency.

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The hostage dynamic of the debt-ceiling fight has created a dangerous, historically unusual set of circumstances. One aspect of it is to set up a precarious, high-stakes negotiation, the failure of which could set off large, immediate, and irreversible damage. The second is to reset the balance of power between the president and Congress, allowing the latter to compel the former to submit to its agenda without concessions. Both these changes would permanently and dangerously alter the character of American government.

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That is a frightening reality, made all the more frightening by two additional factors. The first is that Republicans don’t believe Obama’s insistence that he won’t negotiate. Obama can claim he won’t negotiate, but he would have an incentive to lie about this, and nobody other than Obama can really know for sure. (I believe him, but I wouldn’t bet my life on it.) And one of the things Republicans truly believe about Obama — they say it constantly in private — is that they can make him fold.

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Yet Obama simply has no alternative but to accept that risk. The stakes are higher than resisting the specific demands Republicans are making, and higher even than the economic havoc of a debt breach. Obama is fighting to save his presidency.

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