I just read this piece by Eliot Spitzer on Slate and it hit me that, for good or ill, Obama may well be a one term President. Spitzer points out what Armando already observed:
The White House is in this predicament because this administration really doesn't know how to negotiate. It is hard to believe that in December the White House, and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner in particular, didn't see the debt-ceiling moment coming. It was staring everybody in the face, was written about, speculated about. It was there on the calendar. It was as clear as day that the Republicans were going to use the debt ceiling as a cudgel. If Obama and his team simply ignored it, hoping it would go away, they committed malpractice.
Obama refuses -- almost willfully -- to accept that the Republicans do not share a common interest in the well-being of the country and that their single-minded goal is to utterly destroy him and the Democrats politically. If the economy collapses after a U.S. Government default, it's entirely unclear whether the resulting fear and loathing will damage the Republicans more than Obama, because Obama has insisted in trying to find a "middle ground," thereby blurring the differences between him and his political enemies. The tragic and ironic result could well be that Obama -- who is abundantly capable of eloquently articulating an inspiring vision of our future -- will be a one term President because he deliberately blurred how his vision differed from the Republicans.
And in the end, this really isn't about Obama. We could be faced with at least four years -- and probably eight years or longer -- of darkness, while the Republicans loot what's left of the American Dream. I hope this isn't the hard reality, but I fear that it is.