The last time around, the president negotiated with John Boehner, too. And John Boehner couldn’t sell their solution to his own caucus. So, why would we go through that again.
At House Speaker John A. Boehner’s request, Senate leaders and Representative Nancy Pelosi have been excluded from talks to avert a fiscal crisis, leaving it to Mr. Boehner and President Obama alone to find a deal, Congressional aides say.
All sides, even the parties excluded, say clearing the negotiating room improves the chance of success.
It’s not that I doubt that it is easier for Obama and Boehner to agree to something if there are no other opinions vying for influence. For example, imagine that were trying to pick something to watch on pay-per-view.
The problem is that just because Obama and Boehner agree to watch Kung Fu Panda doesn’t mean that anyone will vote for that once they find out what has been decided.
It just makes Boehner look weak, and he can’t spread the blame around.
Yep. Further proof that President Obama is most dangerous when his opponent thinks Obama is losing.
Example #1: Petraeus and company at the Pentagon presenting Obama with options of war, more war, and endless war during the Afghanistan War “strategic review” in 2009.
The president took the “more war” (i.e., troop “surge”) option, accelerated the timeline and got the generals to state publicly with him that they could accomplish their goals within 18 months. He then put them in charge of their own plan and stuck to the timeline they had publicly vouched for.
Example #2: The 2011 debt ceiling deal in which Obama took a short-term loss to set up the situation we have today:
*Bush tax cuts expiring 1/1/13;
*Sequester of military and “non-defense discretionary) spending starting 1/1/13;
*Obama tax cuts (e.g., payroll taxes) expiring 1/1/13;
*Debt ceiling being reached by 3/13.
For all of the above, Republicans now face the options of a) pissing off their base, b) pissing off the rest of the country, or c) both.
As a political counterpuncher, Obama’s up there with Muhammad Ali (10/30/74 edition). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rumble_in_the_Jungle
OMG, I KNOW, RIGHT?!
And only 1534 American soldiers, hundreds more American contractors, 653 international coalition members, and untold thousands and thousands of Afghans needed to die in a kleptocratic, failed state to make it happen! BRILLIANT! He sure showed them who’s boss!
http://www.icasualties.org/
Would that we were all so lucky to have such “wins” in our own day to day lives…
Thanks for the response. As one who thought the Afghanistan War should have ended about as quickly as the Grenada War, I’m not happy about it either.
But President Obama is operating in the world as it is, not the world as it should be. (Which is not to absolve him—or those of us who voted for him four years ago—of all responsibility. He campaigned throughout 2007-08 on escalating the Afghanistan War.)
Furthermore, it’s all but certain that key leaders in the Pentagon were hoping to “roll” this young, liberal president much like Colin Powell “rolled” Bill Clinton in 1993 on gay and lesbian troops serving openly in the military.
Obama ended the Iraq War on schedule, ended the Afghanistan “surge” on schedule, and signed and implemented “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. That’s not perfect, but I’d wager it’s far more than much of the top brass wanted, let alone what they thought this young guy who’d never spent a day in uniform would be able to accomplish.
I didn’t agree with Candidate Obama on Afghanistan…but you can’t say he didn’t campaign on what he did…he did exactly what he said he would do….
Not to absolve him…but to totally absolve him. Uh huh.
Don’t go squishy on me now just because of the bodycount. You said the war in Afghanistan was a cunning and glorious political success. Own it.
I’m with Massappeal on this. Often, our real world choices aren’t “what’s best” vs. “other options.” In this case it was “indefinite war” vs. “contained-time-limited-war.” My question to you is would you prefer Obama not have cut the deal he cut, in which case our troops would remain there with no pullout date, because Obama did not have the political cover to just pull them out on his own. At this point, having killed bin Laden, he might. Back then he did not. (Please don’t tell me you blame Obama for Guantanamo remaining open too.)
Thanks for the pushback. I’ll own that I voted for Barack Obama despite knowing (as best as I could) that he would expand the (to my mind, senseless and immoral) Afghanistan War.
I didn’t say the war in Afghanistan was “a cunning and glorious political success”. I was using it as an example to make a point about what I perceive to be one of President Obama’s strengths: his ability to take a negotiation in which all his options are bad and the other side is going to “win” the negotiation (more troops in Afghanistan for the generals, domestic spending cuts for House Republicans on the debt ceiling deal), and negotiate terms which set him up for a bigger “win” in the longer term.
So, the generals got their “surge” in 2009, but because Obama made them, as a condition of his agreement, stand up publicly with him and say they could do the job in 18 months, Petraeus & company didn’t have a leg to stand on when Obama started withdrawing troops 18 months later.
And, because of the terms Obama negotiated on the debt ceiling deal (half the sequester coming from the Pentagon, raising the debt ceiling into early 2013, setting the sequestration date to coincide with the end of the Bush tax cuts), congressional Republicans find themselves in what superficially looks like the situation 18 months ago when they embarrassed the president, but actually is a new situation in which he has the upper hand.
There’s lots of joking and debate in liberal political blogosphere about Obama’s penchant for “eleven-dimensional chess”. He’s made his share of mistakes (and decisions that I disagree with), but it’s hard to argue that he’s not good at thinking several steps ahead of his opponents…especially in those moments when they think they’ve got him cornered.
You’re seemingly oblivious to what you keep saying. There’s no “bigger win” in Afghanistan. There’s nothing commendable or clever about its leadership. You’re saying that any possible conditions of failure are tolerable there as long as the war…ends. Eventually. How the war was conducted and whether or not it achieved any geopolitical dividends is apparently irrelevant.
Screw fighting the Taliban, let’s talk about how the President fought his own military instead! After all, it’s only five extra years of fairly intense warfare and all the attendant corruption and waste and mismanagement that nation building creates. No big deal that you could pick any old SIGAR report and find a half dozen billion dollar scandals that mirror the Iraq reconstruction step for step. Screw context or objectivity, the President is just such a nice guy, how much can you really blame him for five years of war and nation building half the world away?
War is the most serious decision a state can make. There wasn’t a “surge.” There was a surge. A real one. Tens of thousands of people got sent there to fight and die. This is not academic. It happened. What they did there matters. Whether they succeeded or not on our behalf matters. Or at least it should.
I always notice that nobody ever even tries to promote or justify the war’s success anymore. So this thread’s shown off all the old classics instead. Rikyrah played the “hey, he said he was gonna make a destructive decision before he did it, so you know, whatever” card. Parallax started deflecting and inserting non-sequiturs about Guantanamo for whatever reason. There was also the false political argument about public pressure, when we just had an election a whole month ago on which the war had no impact (and it’s allegedly as unpopular as congress at this point). I’d rather people just admit that they don’t want to talk about it or think about it because it disturbs the tidy narrative about the President and the nation that they prefer, and that’s that. No more excuses.
So you’re saying that the president should have pulled every troop out of Afghanistan as soon as he took office in 2009?
Regarding the Afghanistan War, the “bigger win”—pathetic as it is—is that the U.S. is withdrawing troops rather than keeping the same number there, or adding more. In the world as it is—with the military-industrial complex Eisenhower correctly identified (only when he was leaving public life but, better late than never)—that’s all we’re going to get.
Slightly off topic. I think the matter of the craziest member of the House of Representatives (a thread here from a week ago or so) has been settled.
Turns out it was Goehmert as his lone pro-lunatic vote demonstrates.
Agent Orange is in a tough spot. He is incompetent and trying to corral a bunch of crazies. Cantor is nipping at his heels and McConnell isn’t a lot of help to him after his legislative masturbation yesterday.
You’re right. I wouldn’t want Boehner’s job. The Repubs are between a rock and a hard place and, for Boehner, multiply that by about a million. I wouldn’t say these direct negotiations “make him look weak” so much as reveal his weakness. But it’s not his fault. Anyone in that situation would be weak. That could be why he hasn’t been pushed out. Does Cantor really want the job? So much easier to sit on the sidelines and throw stones. This is always the problem for Tea Partiers; when the time comes to govern, they can’t.
DeMint saw the end coming; he and the other Repubs were going to have to make difficult choices and he wanted nothing of it.
I kinda of thought this would happen:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/fiscal-cliff-talks-down-obama-143346282.html
Orange Julius just wanted to score political points, by directly blaming Obama. President Obama should not sit down with those “numnuts” until the tax hike on the top 2% is agreed too by the Republicans. Otherwise, any other proposal is an “non-starter”.
Looks like the main issue is the debt ceiling threat. Yesterday, Jay Carney on the President’s behalf threw the steering wheel out of the jalopy (to use the “Chicken” metaphor). Obama says he will forgo asserting the 14th amendment as an end run around the debt ceiling.
So what Boehner has to decide is remove the debt ceiling threat legislatively and raise taxes on the income bracket that exceeds $250,000 or, whee, over the cliff we go and the GOP gets the responsibility for raising taxes on the middle class.
I’m thinking that one-on-one with Boehner pretty much makes going over the fiscal cliff a certainty in 24 days.
BTW, are the meetings scheduled in the afternoon or evening?
Why do you ask? Estimating Boehner’s blood alcohol level at meeting time?
It is reported that Boehner starts his cocktail hour early.
Orange Julius doesn’t want the rest of them to see him beg.
No, never let ’em see you beg.
Crying, fine; but begging, never!
I assume Boehner is trying to weaken the Tea Partiers. If he and the President can reach a deal, those members of the GOP who vote for it will seem reasonable. Those who vote against will take the blame, at least among the general public. It looks to me as if this as an actual declaration of war between the GOP Establishment arm and the TP.
They’re going to have to end the Tea Party’s reign of terror sometime. Of course, they’ll probably try to do it at the worst possible time and in the worst possible way.
I love your interpretation. I see no evidence that it’s anything more than wishful thinking, but I’d love to be wrong.
Oh, I see no evidence either. I just can’t think of any other explanation for why Boehner would take full responsibility this way. Clearly, he’s not the brightest guy, but he has to have some political skill to have come this far.
Even so, I gotta believe Boehner wishes he was in Denny Hastert’s position, a figurehead with his own Hammer to do the heavy lifting. The party is full of guys who like their positions but don’t want to do the job that goes with it.
I’m going to drive my stake in the ground and say that there will be no deal and that January is going to be a fucking miserable time to be an American. I am struggling, at times, to get too gleeful about the some of the politics of this when I see how badly, and almost eagerly, the GOP is ready to do a major fucking of every single person in this country. And I still have significant unease that the only way that the GOP will let this go is to carve out a significant part of the flesh in Social Security and Medicare. Will the rest of our politicos let them blow things up or will they eventually cave? The assumption is that the GOP will blink. But what happens when the hostage takers actually start killing their fucking hostages?
I really think there are enough hard right ideologues in the GOP and mushy Republicans who shit their pants thinking about the Tea Party crowd, to fly this plane straight into the ground. I think there is a possibility that some of them have crossed over into a mentality that rivals an al-Qaeda type personality. They seem almost eager to push that button on the economic bomb vest they are wearing. There is more than just a hint of sadistic martyrdom to their attitude. If a worst case scenario plays out, a lot of the public is not going to give a shit who started it. I don’t want to be a guy in his mid-50’s who, once again, watches 35-50% of everything he has saved in his fucking life go down the shitter again. Once is enough. No penalty would be too extreme for them if the GOP gets the big smoking crater they seem to be longing for.
I’m not so pessimistic. There are those who would fly the plane into the ground, as you put it. But they remain the minority. I see the possibility of a rift within the GOP for its heart and soul. But I believe the voters will hold them accountable for any economic damage that comes from it.
This is precisely why Obama has the upper hand. Yes, the Bush tax cuts expire and the Repubs can’t stop it. Thanks God for that. But it goes much further. The Repubs can’t even offer up an alternative for fear of alienating the entire country, much of their own base included. We’re watching the beginning of a major political realignment unfold before us.
I want to be optimistic, too. I wish I could say that this “minority” was not really in charge of what the Republicans will finally decide to do or not do. The thought of having to wait two fucking years for the GOP to get its comeuppance does not exactly leave me warm and fuzzy. Voters are notoriously forgetful and are quickly distracted by a new shiny object. I am at the point in my life where I don’t have a lot of time to recover financially from a second financial shitstorm in less than 10 years at the hands of the GOP. I understand the politics of it. But the consequences are real world. There is no way in hell that I think the majority of one of our political parties gives a shit about me. And they still wield a significant amount of power in this very serious game.
In the end, once the ingredients are baked into the cake, it doesn’t matter who is alienated politically or who has jeopardized their future political aspirations. Hard working people are screwed. And many of them are screwed for good. And I can’t shake the fear that the cross-hairs in this political gamesmanship are sighted right on me.
Mike, I am not a financial advisor, but with my investments, I have the option of moving money temporarily to a money market, for instance, where I don’t make much but I can’t lose much, either, and then returning it to other investments after the crisis is passed. Maybe you have an option for something like that, too?
For your equity component, invest in solid recession-resistant companies paying a good dividend. If you are a ways from retirement, reinvest the dividends. If the stocks go down, that will pay off. Putting my money where my mouth is, I hold AT&T (T), AstraZeneca (AZN) (I use their medicine, I know how expensive it is), and Royal Dutch Shell (RDS-B). Your conscience may not let you buy the last one. For a good conservative mutual fund, Vanguard Wellesley (VWINX), this is by far my biggest holding, three times bigger than AT&T and Volkswagen (VLKAY). Volkswagen has really taken off this year because everyone expected Germany to melt down into a third world country. I have more faith in Germany and VW’s record is fantastic. But it was a gamble. I’ve made 24% on that stock and it’s still going up, but it IS still a gamble. However VWINX is where Wellesley College invests.
http://performance.morningstar.com/fund/performance-return.action?t=VWINX®ion=USA&culture
=en-US
Notice a less than 10% drop during the big meltdown. I wish I had held it then. At that time I was big into Russian stocks and lost half my retirement funds. But then I HAVE to gamble with my IRA because both parties want to gut Social Security.
For bonds, I don’t think there are any good choices any more. I’ve done well over the years with Fidelity Emerging Market Income (FNMIX). As long term portfolio manager John Carlson points out, many so-called emerging nations have better trade balances and sounder currencies than the US and Europe.
The investment advice is nice and I recommend doing whatever you can to protect and further your financial interests. But I guess I’ve never thought money would make me happy or lack of it would make me unhappy. The world will keep spinning, the sun will come up every morning, and who knows what’s for the best. In many ways, I think people were happier when they had less stuff.
Good point. But back then when we had less stuff, my father made enough money to put lots of food on the table and good (Sears and Roebuck) clothes on our backs. Back then the food was grown in the USA (no peaches in Winter, lots of cheap Michigan peaches in August) and the clothes were made down South in the Dixie mills, lots of cotton. People worked in the North, no shortage of factory jobs there. People worked in the South, textile mills, lumber mills et cetera. And farms were mostly family owned.
Nostalgia glosses over a lot and there were many inequities in society and down-right bigotry. Still, economically, although the GDP per capita was less, working people were better of, although there was less “stuff”. My family didn’t own a car until the mid-50’s and then it was a 7 year old rustbucket.
SATSQ Because they already know there’s not going to be a deal.
Did Charlie Crist really JUST announce he’s switching to Dem party on twitter? Or did I miss an announcement? I’ve had a lot going on this week, but I woulda remembered this I think.
yep he announced via twitter
https://twitter.com/charliecristfl/status/277243755734646784
theres’s a pic with his paperwork I guess
Booman,
Apparently you missed the Times story last week that said the House GOP are all loyally behind Boehner.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/us/politics/boehner-gains-strong-backing-of-house-gop.html?_r=0
Now can somebody tell me how I can get my tongue out of my cheek?