On the morning after the night when the G.O.P. caved in humiliating fashion, the Thin Man was trying his best not to gloat. “Let’s be clear: there are no winners here,” Obama said from the State Dining Room of the White House. After recounting some of the economic costs of the seventeen-day government shutdown and the dispute over the debt ceiling, he said, “The American people are completely fed up with Washington.”
There’s no doubt about that. But on the first point, the President was being too modest. As I noted yesterday, in holding firm to his pledge not to negotiate with the Republicans in the face of dire threats about debt defaults, and by forcing them to retreat, he was a big political winner. Perhaps it hasn’t yet shown up in his approval ratings—although, according to the Gallup daily tracker, they have held steady over the past few weeks, while the Republican Party’s have plummeted to new lows. But Obama’s standing within his own party, and in the capital, has received a substantial, and much-needed, lift.
Just a few weeks ago, some members of the Washington commentariat were writing him off as a weak second-term President, stymied by a divided government. After the White House reversed course on Syria, and then buckled in the face of opposition to the prospect of Larry Summers as Fed chairman, Dick Morris, he of the reputed passion for the lower extremities of the female form, wrote that Obama’s woes “signal the waning of his power and approaching lame-duck status only nine months into his second term.”
On one level, the President’s underlying situation hasn’t changed: he still faces a Republican-controlled House of Representatives that will seek to make his life miserable for the remainder of his term in office. But by thoroughly outmaneuvering his opponents this time around, he accomplished three things. First, he showed that he still has some spunk. Second, he adhered to the old political truism: when your opponent is digging himself into a hole, let him (or her) get on with it. Unlike the last debt-ceiling crisis, in 2011, he didn’t get drawn into negotiations that led him down a self-defeating path, one that led to the fiscal cliff and the sequester. And third, Obama happened upon a political strategy that could serve him well for the rest of his term: stand up to G.O.P. extremism.
Before Obama made his remarks, the cable networks were speculating that he would be conciliatory, offering to cooperate with the Republicans on issues like the budget, immigration, and the farm bill. He did, indeed, urge Congress to get to work on these matters, and he said that he was willing to listen to the G.O.P.’s ideas, but his tone was anything but placatory. Rather than saying, “Let’s move on,” he gave the Republicans a lecture on the damage that they had done to the economy; lambasted the “professional activists who profit from conflict”; and, in a direct poke at the Tea Party and its veneration of the Founding Fathers, delivered a lengthy defense of government’s role in the economy. “Let’s work together to make government work better, instead of treating it like an enemy, or purposely making it work worse. That’s not what the founders of this nation envisioned when they gave us the gift of self-government,” he said. “Don’t break what our predecessors spent over two centuries building. That’s not being faithful to what this country is about.”
This was partly just Obama doing things that he always does well: playing the role of Mr. Reasonable, delivering a civics lesson, and diverting attention from potentially damaging issues, such as the glitch-plagued rollout of the Affordable Care Act’s insurance exchanges. But he was also sending a none-too-subtle message to Republicans (and Democrats) on Capitol Hill. Until and unless the G.O.P. changes course, he is done reaching across the aisle and making compromises. On issues like the budget and immigration, he’s happy to talk to Republicans—or, preferably, to have an emissary do it. But the talks will have to be on his terms.
Take the budget negotiations that are part of the debt-ceiling agreement, and which will be led, at least initially, by Congressman Paul Ryan, of Wisconsin, and Senator Patty Murray, of Washington. If we go by Ryan’s own budget proposals and the public statements of Speaker Boehner, the Republicans will demand spending cuts on top of spending cuts. Obama, while saying that he wanted a budget that “cuts out the things that we don’t need,” didn’t specify anything that he’d be willing to axe. Instead, he called for an agreement that “closes corporate tax loopholes that don’t help create jobs, and frees up resources for the things that do help us grow, like education and infrastructure and research.”
It barely needs saying that the chance that House Republicans will agree to more spending in these areas is practically nil. There is perhaps more room for a deal on long-term budget reduction, including trims to entitlement programs, but Obama didn’t signal any willingness to give ground. Ryan, in recent weeks, has retreated somewhat from his idea of turning Medicare into a voucher system, and, instead, endorsed means-testing some retirement benefits. Of the long-term budget questions, the President merely said, “We can address them without short-changing our kids or short-changing our grandkids or weakening the security that current generations have earned from their hard work.”
Obama is largely right on the economics, especially on the immediate challenges that the country is facing. (More on this in a subsequent column.) With the deficit having fallen sharply in the past few years, there is no need for more spending cuts. Indeed, there is a strong argument for getting rid of the sequester, and for directing more resources toward additional government investment—a policy shift that would amount to a mild stimulus.
My main point here, though, is a political one. Obama no longer sounds like a President who is seeking a “grand bargain” on the budget, and who, to that end, would be willing to enrage seniors and face down members of his own party. He sounds more like a President burned by his previous encounters with the Republicans, who has accepted that, for the foreseeable future, he’s going to be engaged in trench warfare, and so he had better make sure that the sandbags are in place and that the gun turrets are manned.
Given that some Republican leaders have recently been acting like General Haig and Marshal Foch, the inept First World War generals who were responsible for the futile offensives of 1915 and 1916, the President has reason to hope that they will decide to send their troops over the top once again, possibly as early as the New Year. If they do, he will be ready for them.
Photograph by Jacquelyn Martin/AP.
