This was published last Friday, but I didn't see it until tonight. If someone has already written a diary on this, I'll be happy to delete.
According to Michael Hirsh at the National Journal, President Obama held an unpublicized meeting with some liberal economists just before his news conference about the tax cuts compromise on December 7th. In attendance were Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs, Alan Blinder, and Robert Reich. With Obama were Austan Goolsbee and Jared Bernstein.
I knew that Reich had met with thte President, but I was unaware this was a larger meeting.
In what two participants describe as a somewhat-argumentative one-hour discussion, Obama tried to convince the group that his compromise would deliver more bang for the buck to the economy and to people most in need of help than any other politically feasible option.
"He didn’t really respond,'' said one of the participants. "He said it was hard to change the narrative after 30 years" of small-government rhetoric and policies dating back to Ronald Reagan. "He seemed to be looking for a way to reassure the base. Or maybe it was just to reassure himself."
Another participant said the meeting was mostly good-natured and polite, but that the president complained about how hard it was to get anything through Congress.
Of the meeting, Krugman said he didn't think it was his place to comment on the conversation but added that he (Krugman) wasn't overly "vociferous."
In light of these economists' comments subsequent to the meeting, President Obama was apparently unable to sell the tax cuts to them which might explain why he was so dismissive of liberals later at the press conference.
"This notion that somehow we are willing to compromise too much -- this is the public option debate all over again," the president said. "We pass something that Democrats have been fighting for for over 100 years, but because there was a provision in there that they didn't get...somehow that was a sign of weakness and compromise."
He continued, "If that's the standard by which we are measuring success or core principles, then let's face it, we will never get anything done. People will have the satisfaction of having a purist position and no victories for the American people."
I'd love to have been a fly on the wall at that meeting.
