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2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumHow to make a better president
Barack Obama made one giant mistake two years ago -- but he's clearly learned from it
BY STEVE KORNACKI
Without question, the lowest moment of Barack Obamas first term came at the end of the summer of 2011, when the public registered its disgust with a totally needless debt ceiling drama that produced a last-minute compromise that seemed to enrage everyone. The fallout crashed Obamas approval rating to the low-40s, the lowest mark of his presidency and a level dangerously close to where George H.W. Bush the last one-term president was in his reelection year.
That nadir, as Steve Benen pointed out Tuesday, was the product of a serious strategic blunder by the White House. In the lame duck session at the end of 2010, Obamas team had opted not to push for the inclusion of a debt ceiling extension in the tax cut/stimulus package that the president and congressional Republicans agreed to. That allowed the GOP to manufacture a crisis as the August 2 deadline approached, threatening to allow a default unless Obama caved to their demands. Obama was hardly alone in taking a P.R. hit the Republican Partys image tanked in the wake of the fiasco too but he emerged from it with his presidency imperiled.
He learned two lessons from the experience. The first was that meaningful compromise with Republicans in the 112th Congress was impossible. In the run-up to the August deadline, he had pursued a grand bargain with House Speaker John Boehner, an effort that grew out of Obamas belief that voters had been signaling their desire for bipartisan compromise in the 10 midterms. But the GOPs staunch anti-tax absolutism left Boehner powerless to meet Obama halfway, with the Speaker walking away from talk just days before the deadline.
In the wake of this, Obama dedicated the rest of his first term to highlighting the basic philosophical differences that had kept him and Boehner apart and demonstrating how intent the GOP was on obstructing his economic agenda. For the first two-and-half-years of his term, Obama tried to play the role of compromiser-in-chief, straining to win over Republican support for his agenda. It was the debt ceiling showdown that convinced him once and for all that this was a dead end that hed have to take his case to the voters in 2012 and hope that theyd send a message that would jar Republicans from their obstinacy.
And there are some tentative signs that this months election is having that effect. Its true that the headlines about Republicans suddenly breaking with Grover Norquists anti-tax pledge are overstated, but there is at least some recognition on the right that Obama has real leverage in the current fiscal cliff standoff. On Tuesday, for instance, one of the top Republicans in the House urged his colleagues to agree now to Obamas call for an extension of the Bush rates for the bottom 98 percent of income-earners, and to fight the battle over the low rates on the rich after. Such talk of decoupling by a Republican would have been unthinkable before the election.
So, as Greg Sargent explained Tuesday, its not 2011 anymore. Because of the nature of the cliff the tax hikes and spending cuts set to trigger on January 1are more anathema to the right than the left and because of his electoral victory, Obama is in position to make demands that he couldnt make two summers ago. Which brings us to the second lesson that he and his team learned from that experience: Dont ever hand the GOP an opportunity to use the debt ceiling as a negotiating tool again.
This is why Democrats are now demanding that any fiscal cliff deal include a provision to raise the debt ceiling, which were now set to bump up against in early 2013.
-snip-
continue reading:
http://www.salon.com/2012/11/28/how_to_make_a_better_president/
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