Do the people in this community who regularly express outrage that the Democrats have made yet another deal that does not live up to their expectations, take any comfort from reading right wing websites, where you can find just as vehement outrage that in fact it was the Republicans who have just given away the store? Somehow I doubt it.
A lot of private mediators like to say that if both parties are unhappy with a proposed settlement, that probably means that it is fair. I do a lot of mediations professionally myself, and I never like to tell people that. Why would I want people to leave unhappy? I prefer to try to persuade parties to a conflict that they should feel good about the settlement they are making. They should get a good night's sleep and feel that a weight has been lifted from their shoulders, and that it is good to put a dispute behind them. One way to persuade people that they are doing something beneficial for themselves by resolving a litigated dispute is to get them to understand that they should never compare the deal on the table with the deal that they wanted or believe they deserve. The only thing people should compare a deal to is the alternative of no deal. What that means in the private dispute resolution context is that you have to compare the offer being made by the other side, with the alternative of proceeding with a costly and risky lawsuit. You do not compare the offer being made by the other side with what you believe you are entitled to in some ideal system of justice.
So in evaluating the debt ceiling deal, it is not helpful to compare the deal the party leaders reached tonight with what either side wanted to achieve in these negotiations. (It's also not really helpful to second guess anybody's negotiating strategy, even though everyone loves to do that. Nobody can be sure they could have gotten a better deal with a different strategy. It is unprovable and therefore a waste of time.) Instead you have to compare this deal with the alternative of no deal. Here's what no deal would mean: The Treasury runs out of cash on Wednesday, and then the President has to decide whether to ignore Congress and unilaterally order the Treasury to borrow more money anyway. And that probably causes a constitutional crisis as well as an economic crisis. Alternatively, the President and the Secretary of the Treasury have to decide to stop issuing checks to a lot of government contractors, federal employees, veterans, seniors, people on disability, and a lot of other people who depend on government checks to live. There are only a small number of Congressmen who actually want to play out either one of those scenarios.
Which means that this crappy deal is way better than no deal. Which means that everyone should be happy.
As for President Obama, he was somewhat thwarted in his goal of getting the parties to make some tough decisions about their priorities right now. Some of those decisions are being put off until later in the year. But he seems to have achieved his main goal of taking this debt ceiling issue off the table until after the 2012 election. And that means we can have a real debate in next year's election about taxing and spending priorities, and that ultimately it will be up to the American people to elect the kind of Congress they want to achieve the taxing and spending priorities that they want.
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