cross-posted from my blog, Amerikana Magazine
David Axelrod
I understand there’s a lot of consternation about [the tax package] within the Democratic caucus. But at the end of the day, the president was faced with a choice. The choice was whether to let taxes go up by a significant amount on Jan. 1 and whether we let millions of people depending on unemployment insurance have their lifeline cut. Or do you try to work something out? We engaged in negotiations that would produce something far greater than anyone thought we would get. Compromise, however, means accepting things that we don’t particularly like.
If being a politico were a licensed profession like medicine or law, this would trigger a hearing against Axelrod's political license. The political malpractice that this quote displays is stunning.
Right out of the bat, the allegedly progressive Axelrod adopts the Republican frame on the Bush tax cut expiration, treating it as a tax increase instead of what it actually is, the restoration of a grossly depressed, budget busting tax rate to the sustainable status quo. As odious as it is to hear a so-called liberal peddling Republican ideology on taxes, the bigger problem this quote reveals is that Axelrod, and presumably the White House, were unable to look past the optics of letting Bush's tax cuts expire (something that enjoyed wide public support, by the way) and see the political opportunity.
Instead of yielding to Republican hostage taking, the White House could have and should have placed the burden on the GOP: tell the Republicans "you can pass the tax cut extension we want, or YOU can be responsible for tax rates going up." And, if that threat didn't break Republican obstruction in the lame duck session, then the unpopular Bush Tax Cuts could expire, and then once the new Congress with its new Republican House majority hell-bent on destroying this president convenes, The White House could introduce a new tax cut: The Obama Tax Cut, and the GOP could either vote against a tax cut in their quest to destroy Obama's administration, or they could hand him a huge domestic policy victory to take with him into reelection to his second term. That's how politics gets done.
But the Obama "administration" doesn't like playing politics. They would rather frame the debate as a false choice between a bad deal and coming back empty handed, than engage the enemy and beat them at their own game.
And so we go again, watching the Republicans play cutthroat while the White House plays Candyland, moving one space at a time because it makes it less fun.
Meanwhile, Obama has institutionalized the most unpopular part of Bush's domestic legislative legacy, passing up a historic opportunity to imprint his own administration's mark on the issue, and opened the door for the destruction of Social Security by an emboldened trans-partisan corprofascist legislative junta.
Worst of all, the Obama "administration" seems to be so caught up in its own self-proclaimed wonderfulness it can't even perceive how far aground they've run.
Axelrod better pray Sarah Palin is the Republican nominee, because she is perhaps the only politician with less political self-awareness than Obama has right now... but I think even she knows that negotiating with people who are out to destroy you is probably a bad idea.