The more I think about President Biden’s approach to the debt ceiling negotiations, especially the result, the more I think this was absolutely the right approach. Biden speaks about bipartisan collaboration for the good of the country, but he knows, better than most, that the current version of the Republican party will never negotiate in good faith unless they absolutely have to. So he delayed the debt ceiling negotiations until they absolutely had to.
The compromises that were made, unfortunate though they are, were pretty minor, and would certainly have been worse if the negotiations had started early. Can you imagine the reaction of the ‘Freedom Caucus’ if this deal had been presented to them two months ago? They would have immediately moved to remove McCarthy from the speaker’s chair, and the spineless remainder of the Republican caucus would have let them do it. Then they would have installed someone even worse in his place.
I think the worst mistake President Obama ever made was to extend the roll-out of the Affordable Care Act legislation by having listening sessions and town halls across the country. All this did was give the Republicans time to mobilize against it, flooding the halls with their screaming reactionaries. They successfully misled Americans into believing the legislation was bad and that there was real grass-roots opposition to it. In the end, Americans were less informed (or more mis-informed) about the legislation after the town halls than before, and in the mid-term elections, which were largely a referendum on Obamacare, the Democrats got slaughtered. Once the legislation was in place, everyone could see what an obvious public good it was, but the damage to the body politic was already done.
In effect, Biden turned the ‘hostage situation’ of the debt ceiling on its head. Negotiate now, or risk blowing up the economy and having the Republican party take the blame for it (which they would have well deserved). By not leaving the crazies in the Freedom Caucus time to organize their opposition, Biden saved the economy. It was, for those who were paying attention, a master class in how to deal with political terrorism.