President Obama (Wikimedia Commons)
We shouldn't be talking about deficits. That's the worst part about the entire debate. And from that fundamental problem all others follow. In the midst of the most tenuous of recoveries from one of the most severe recessions, we should be talking about jobs and mortgages and stimulus. We should be talking about reinventing our economy to be green not lean and mean. We should be talking about the Republicans as depraved agents of regression and extremism. We should not be talking to them as if they are willing to negotiate in good faith. We should not be talking to them
as if they are capable of making sound decisions on policy.
The Republicans want to destroy President Obama. Understand that and you begin to understand the futility of even trying to reach out to them. Which begs the question why President Obama continues to reach out to them, and on key issues such as the stimulus or health care reform make concessions before negotiations have even begun, guaranteeing that he will end up compromising down from what he otherwise might have negotiated down to. But when Republicans are so extreme and are operating in such bad faith, he is not required to try to work with them. President of all the people does not mean trying to appease all the people. It means trying to work for the common good. The Republicans do not work for the common good. They and their puppet masters consider the common good to be so common. But politicians and voters both recognize and respect displays of leadership and responsible demonstrations of power. Show weakness and it is blood to sharks. But Barack Obama is not a weak man. That is not the problem. But he does at least seem to play politics from a position of weakness. Over and over and over. And that is a problem.
And so we end up with a stimulus that saved a couple million jobs when we really needed to save multiples of that. And we end up with Republicans crowing that the still struggling economy proves the stimulus failed, which is half right but for exactly the opposite reason they intend. The real failure was that the stimulus wasn't nearly large enough; and while the president's most ardent defenders claim he couldn't have gotten more, the fact is that he didn't really try. He didn't test his early lofty approval ratings and trust that an electorate that had just voted for historic and transformational change wasn't going to waste time listening to the political party that had caused the economic meltdown and that wanted to continue the same economic paradigm that was responsible. He didn't test his early lofty approval ratings and trust that an electorate that had just voted for historic and transformational change wasn't going to waste time listening to the political party that the voters had in consecutive national elections resoundingly rejected.
And so we ended up with a health care plan that turned into a health insurance plan that most resembles RomneyCare (with one key difference) or the 1993 Republican effort rather than anything Democrats had ever previously conceived. Despite popular support, single payer was never even under discussion, and we instead ended up with the insurance mandate the president campaigned against and we ended up without the public option he campaigned for. And as the insurance industry continues to abuse its own power, and people continue to suffer for it, as with the economy the political fallout inevitably lands not on the political party that opposed reform but on the party that promoted but an inadequate facsimile of reform. You get it done or you don't. When halfway measures don't get it done, those responsible for the halfway measures are held accountable. No it's not fair. But it is how it works. And it never was a secret.
When President Obama established the Deficit Commission, he was playing politics on the Republican home field. There was neither a need nor a reason to embrace deficit fever. We needed a second stimulus. We needed a robust jobs program. We needed the traditional Democratic Keynesianism that had ended the Great Depression. Instead, we got Grover Norquist's wildest dream. Last Autumn, when the president successfully pushed for the passage of— and then praised as some sort of success—what was called a tax cut compromise, the ongoing economic and political dynamic became inevitable. Rather than call the Republicans' bluff and force a government shutdown, rather than emulate President Clinton who a generation ago revived his staggering presidency and destroyed the Gingrich revolution before it could establish any realistic momentum, President Obama accepted the extension of the Bush tax cuts that he had previously criticized.
As with the stimulus and health care and the embrace of deficit nonsense, the president was playing politics on the Republican home field and he enacted what was mostly Republican economic policy. And with his own unnecessary Deficit Commission soon to report, the consequences were obvious. Revenue was off the table so Republican budget cuts were going to be on it. It was just weeks later that we heard reports that the president would float Social Security cuts at the State of the Union. Even though Social Security is solvent and does not contribute to the deficit. The president's most ardent defenders were outraged that anyone would believe anonymously sourced reports, just as a year earlier they had been outraged that anyone would believe anonymously sourced reports that the president would send a second massive surge of troops to Afghanistan. Of course, many of those who were outraged that anyone would believe those anonymously sourced reports about a second surge in Afghanistan ended up supporting it with the same fervor that they had denounced those anonymously sourced reports that by then had proved accurate. But the reports about a State of the Union announcement of Social Security cuts did not prove accurate. Whether that proved the reports of an intended announcement false, or whether the reports themselves were part of a tactical trial balloon that was punctured by the sharp negative reaction remained unclear. Because while the president didn't announce any cuts to Social Security he also didn't renounce them. He did not take Social Security cuts off the table. Even though Social Security is solvent and does not contribute to the deficit, he did not take Social Security cuts off the table. He and other members of the administration said Social Security benefits wouldn't be "slashed," but the repetitive use of the exact same word seemed deliberate and coordinated, and the specific meaning of it was never made clear. It still hasn't been.
The worries about Social Security were not put to rest. They could have been, but they weren't. Austerity fever swept through Washington. The economy continued to falter, but a second stimulus was now unthinkable. The only question was what would be cut. The president had said that he took John Boehner at his word not to hold the debt ceiling hostage, but that was exactly what Boehner ended up doing. And if the president really had taken Boehner at his word, he must have been the only one who was surprised when Boehner broke it. As if the man who had held middle class tax cuts and unemployment benefits hostage for a ransom of tax cuts for the wealthy had any sense of honor and decency and could have in any way been trusted to do anything else. After the president had given the Republicans tax cuts in exchange for an inadequate stimulus, after he had negotiated himself down to a Republican health insurance plan that not a single Republican ended up supporting, after he had given Republicans the Bush tax cuts and put the Republican talking points of deficits and austerity at the center of the economic conversation, when it came to the debt ceiling there wasn't much mystery as to how the Republicans would play it.
The president could have stood tall and declared that he would not play games or negotiate over the extension of a debt ceiling that had won bipartisan support every time it had ever come up, but he didn't. He could have put responsibility for blowing up the economy squarely on the Republicans' shoulders, but he didn't. No one expected he would. Certainly the Republicans didn't expect that he would. Everyone knew that if the Republicans again fought dirty the president would give nice speeches, then give them much of what they wanted. Certainly the Republicans themselves knew that if they again fought dirty the president would give nice speeches, then give them much of what they wanted. How could he not? He was playing their game, on their field, on their terms, in their language. Deficits. Budget cuts. Everything on the table. Except for serious revenue enhancements. Except for a second stimulus. With unemployment and foreclosures still devastating the lives of tens of millions.
Maybe Social Security won't be cut. We still don't know. Even though Social Security is solvent and does not contribute to the deficit, we still don't know that it won't be cut. We do know that it is now part of the conversation about cutting deficits. Even though it is solvent and does not contribute to the deficit, it is now part of the conversation about cutting deficits. Maybe Medicare and Medicaid won't be cut. We still don't know. But we do know that there won't be a second stimulus, and it seems sadly laughable to propose that the Bush/Obama tax cuts will be allowed to expire next time. We do know that despite explicit warnings from both Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and the Congressional Budget Office, trillions of dollars are almost certain to be slashed from the federal budget. We do know that the wars will not be part of those cuts. But whether or not Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid will be cut, to an unprecedented degree cutting them is now a bipartisan aspect of the conversation, and the federal budget will be slashed when it really needs to be expanded. Does anyone seriously believe this will create jobs? Does anyone seriously believe this will stop people from losing their homes? Does anyone seriously believe this won't undermine an already weak "recovery"?
The worst part about this is that none of it was necessary. People spend a lot of time and energy attempting to excavate rationales and excuses, and it is strange that some of the president's most ardent supporters spend so much time telling us what he can't do, but the truth is that none of this was necessary. The president could have stood his ground, anywhere along the way. Not once has he forced a showdown. Not once has he called a Republican bluff and forced the party of regression and extremism to prove the depths of its depravity. In the heat of the health care policy meltdown, there was a moment when it appeared there might be a compromise that involved giving up a public option in exchange for a lowering of the age for Medicare eligibility. Of course, that disappeared along with so many other good ideas that were floated during the health care policy meltdown, and now we face the more realistic possibility of the age of eligibility for Medicare—and maybe even of Social Security—being raised. And even as their own attempts to cut Medicare had backed Republicans into their own political corner, and put control of the House back into play for next year, we face the possibility of even such a potent defining political issue being eviscerated by Democrats themselves being responsible for cutting Medicare. There are choices. None of these choices have been necessary. Lines in the sand are never drawn. Showdowns never comes.
Paul Krugman, who has been accurate about almost everything for the past several years, puts it bluntly:
I’m not alone in marveling at the extent to which Obama has thrown his rhetorical weight behind anti-Keynesian economics; Ryan Avent is equally amazed, as are many others. And now he’s endorsing the structural unemployment story too.
To those defending Obama on the grounds that he’s saying what he has to politically, I have two answers. First, words matter — as people who rallied around Obama in the first place because of his eloquence should know. Yes, he has to make compromises on policy grounds — but that doesn’t mean he has to adopt the right’s rhetoric and arguments. The effect of his intellectual capitulation is that we now have only one side in the national argument.
Second, since Obama keeps talking nonsense about economics, at what point do we stop giving him credit for actually knowing better? Maybe at some point we have to accept that he believes what he’s saying.
And the incomparable digby:
Everyone's always trying to figure out what Barack Obama really wants. But it's not a mystery. He's been clear about it from the very beginning. What people have to face is the fact that he is a rigid leader who refuses to change course in the face of changing circumstances. Perhaps that's a strength at times. But in this one, it's a tragic weakness.
We have over 9% official unemployment and probably double that in reality. The housing sector is still dead. Growth is anemic and very possibly about to go south. His grand bargain vision from 2009 was always anathema to the liberal project. Today it is destructive on an entirely different level.
In the past week, we witnessed the truly astonishing spectacle of a wide array of Democratic Congressional leaders feeling it necessary to stand up to a Democratic President in order to defend the programs and values that have defined the Democratic Party since the Great Depression. Just think about that. And now some consider it a victory that there probably won't be any immediate cuts to Social Security, even though there will be a trillion or more in overall budget cuts, without any major increases in revenue. And cutting Social Security is now safe to discuss on both sides of the aisle. To use digby's own comparison, only Nixon could go to China; and while Reagan and the Bushes did not even seriously try, a Democratic president may be opening the door to the dismantling of the New Deal.