Is anyone surprised that John Boehner can’t deliver a deal?
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Don’t be premature in your gloating. It’s not over until it’s over. The President should stop helping Mr. Boehner by tossing him life preservers. It’s time for the anvil, Mr. President.
What you’re describing as “tossing him these life preservers” is how Obama scored such a big political victory in July 2011.
I don’t remember that big victory other than it was one of the proximate reasons that Occupy Wall Street’s argument about Wall Street’s control of Congress got so much traction.
Tell me. Which victory was that?
Right.. such a big victory is why Obama has changed his negotiating style this time around.
Except, according to you two, he hasn’t changed his negotiating style, and he is still “throwing the Republicans life preservers.”
I didn’t say he wasn’t handling the current situation well. He seems to be so far. I just don’t think your characterization of the 2011 deal is accurate.
Whether my take on those negotiations is accurate or not, his “negotiating” style is exactly the same this time. He’s still bending over backwards to appear reasonable, while the Republicans steadfastly reject his offers.
If you don’t agree that he was working deliberately for that outcome, fine, but whatever he was doing last time, he’s doing again now.
Now, as for whether he is doing this on purpose, let me ask you something: if the Prime Minister of Iraq approached you about extending the American troop presence, and you really wanted to see it happen, would you make legal immunity for American troops a precondition to discussing the proposal?
What if you didn’t want to see their presence extended, but you also didn’t want to give a shaky ally a direct “No?” Would you bring up such a condition then?
Don’t you look at polls?
Don’t you read the news?
The outcome of the debt ceiling negotiations was the collapse of the Republican Congress’s approval, down into the single digits, the end of the Tea Party’s momentum, the media turning around the overwhelmingly positive coverage of the Republicans, and the open intramural warfare that plagues the Republicans to this day.
You’re smarter than this. You have really, really try not to understand the crushing blow delivered to the Republicans in the summer of 2011.
Look at this:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/congressional_job_approval-903.html
Look at what happened between early June 2011 and the end of August.
Oh, yeah, THAT victory.
Have to agree – this is just theatre. Public posturing does not equal negotiations. There are of course real discussions going on inside both parties amongst the various players and some real discussions between the players. Those real discussions may be, and often are, vastly different than the public pronouncements.
I’ve participated in numerous negotiations between corporations and one thing I learned is that the person acting in the formal leadership role often has little to do with the final outcome. This certainly isn’t always the case – my current CEO knows his details inside and out and is a master of negotiations. But I’ve also worked for CEOs who knew nothing but the 30 minute briefing they got before negotiations and sometimes conceded so much that the other side rescued them.
I suspect Boner is in the latter category, based on both his results (how many votes did he hold to repeal Obamacare?) and his comments about, well, everything. Obama I’m not sure about. I mean, he’s extremely smart and he could be playing 11th dimensional chess and intentionally pissing off the left with his offers over the years to cut SS and Medicare, and thus pleasing some of the Washington punditry with his hippie punching. Maybe this really is very clever negotiations – and as I said above you can’t judge on public pronouncements. BUT, the hippie punching 11th dimensional chess offers to cut SS and Medicare are exactly those statements used to substantiate the accusations that Democrats want to do those things, which cuts their effectiveness. And if it isn’t hippie-punching-as-theater-for-the-punditry and he actually is offering these things, which should be off the table, in negotiations he should be doing it only as the last concession in order to win the deal (and make it extremely public that this is what he had to do, the GOP wouldn’t deal without it) rather than as an early offer.
In the end I’m waiting until I hear the final deal. I am not confident that the final deal – even if not until next year – won’t contain the SS cuts Obama offered and furthermore not confident that they won’t be labeled as his idea as a result. But it is possible that in private negotiations Obama’s team is holding a hard line on what is important to his constituency and to the centrists that his party needs in future elections. It’s possible – we have to hope that is the case.
The only way there was ever going to be a deal is if the President totally capitulated to the GOP demands. Now there are some who would say, “The day ain’t over yet”. But I think it’s coming up to the witching hour where Obama gives them a big old “Fuck You!” and lays out the country exactly where things stand.
IOW, tosses them an anvil.
But I think it’s coming up to the witching hour where Obama gives them a big old “Fuck You!” and lays out the country exactly where things stand.
I agree.
Soon – not yet, though. Timing is everything in a game like this. If he does that too early, he blows the whole thing, and squanders the benefit of the public blaming the Republicans for the impasse.
We all saw (though, apparently, only some of us recognized) how devastating that blame was for the Republicans by the end of the debt ceiling drama.
There was some noise right after the election about Obama taking his initiatives on the road, that is, in public appearances all over the country and presenting his case directly to the people, if Congress continued their scorched-earth policy of obstruction.
As I understand where things lie atm, we can go over the cliff and still have time to work out something before the scheduled cuts, or most of them, go into effect. And also, the President has a lot of flexibility in the timing of a lot of it.
The public backlash against “Plan Boner” would be a decent anvil for the GOP as a whole, in such a turn of events, and we’d lose little or nothing in terms of real-world pain. I’m a little shaky on unemployment benefits under this scenario, but everything else seems fairly safe.
How predictable. I mean is anyone surprised by this, particularly the President? Boehner won’t negotiate in good faith because he can’t. So Obama makes a compromise offer and they throw it back in his face and somehow they think they’ll come out blameless by taking a pyrrhic vote on taxes.
The only thing more predictable is the firebagger view that this somehow makes the President weaker.
No doubt that he’s having a good cry even as we speak.
Boehner couldn’t deliver a Papa John’s pizza without getting lost, even with a GPS.
The social security cuts better be Kabuki, and better be off the table.
That would be a real disaster.
i was pretty sure a deal wasn’t happening when we started hearing about the President’s offer yesterday.
Sad to say but I’m glad Boehner can’t deliver a deal because that is truly a life preserver for Obama, Pelosi and the Democrats not to lose the momentum they were fortunate enough to gain. They acted as if they don’t really need the progressive wing of the Democratic party. Maybe not in the number of votes on the floor but I think the argument can be made that the progressives were the fire that made the 2012 gains possible. It’s even worse if Obama says it was Biden who made the promise, not him, for flat out no reductions in benefits for Social Security and Medicare. Makes them look like bait and switch hucksters.
We are in a much stronger position no matter how bad the physical cliff becomes, ready to go to hell and back, than for our newly reelected leaders to sell out their own side. This kind of sell out, if it were to succeed, would cause a level of disgust where people just walk away from the process, something like 2010 but this time in 2014. So I say, go Boehner and the rest of your gang of crazies, fuck this up real good and save Obama from himself before you accidentally win.
and you think the Prez didn’t know this?
I hope he did. If he did then he learned a lot from his mistakes in his negotiations during the first two years.
I have no idea what Obama thinks or knows but I suspect he wanted to throw Boehner a bone and this was the one he chose, while bad, would cause the least damage plus the progressive would get over it, you know, tough choices.
I think Pelosi was surprised by the intense reaction of the progressives because of her statement today, “I’ve said to the members, `express yourselves,'” Pelosi said. “Speak out against — because I’m not thrilled with the President’s proposal. It’s what it is in order to save the day. But that doesn’t mean that we all identify with every aspect of it. So they go forth with my blessing.” Then added, “No, I don’t,” consider it a benefit cut, she said. “I consider it a strengthening of Social Security.” Talk about bullshit.
So what you’re saying is that you think Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi – the President and House Speaker behind the successful passage of the largest legislative agenda in two generations, against the most unified and aggressive opposition since the Civil War – just don’t understand how Washington and the Republican Party work as well as you do.
It’s a theory.
No, he’s saying that the assertion that chained CPI is strengthening Social Security is bullshit.
And personally, I would argue that “successful passage of the largest legislative agenda in two generations” belongs to George W Bush. That agenda stank, but in scope it far exceeded Obama’s. Of course, I’ll concede that Democrats like Kent Conrad and Joe Lieberman opposed Obama and enabled Bush.
No, he’s saying that the assertion that chained CPI is strengthening Social Security is bullshit.
That really doesn’t make sense as an interpretation of what he wrote. The comment he replied to was about how negotiations with the Republicans work. There was nothing in either his comment, or the one he replied to, about whether chained CPI strengthened Social Security.
That may be the point that is on your mind, but it doesn’t seem to be the point he was making.
And personally, I would argue that “successful passage of the largest legislative agenda in two generations” belongs to George W Bush.
What are you talking about? His legislative agenda amounts to a temporary tax cut, a compromise Medicare drug plan, the creation of the DHS, and the failed Social Security privatization effort. When people talk about George Bush’s presidency, his legislative accomplishments are a footnote.
That agenda stank, but in scope it far exceeded Obama’s.
That’s really quite a silly statement. You will not find one out of 100 political scientists, historians, or journalists who would agree with you. The debate is whether Obama’s legislative accomplishments exceed LBJ’s, and it’s universally acknowledged that they exceed those of Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Kennedy, Eisenhower, and Truman.
And NCLB and Bankruptcy reform. Still practically nothing.
The tax cut is effectively permanent. Even Obama wants to keep most of it. Homeland Security and the bunker mentality that goes with it is bigger than mandated health insurance. The needless war in Iraq was also a major (negative) accomplishment.
Yes there was read it again:
Is “effectively permanent” another way to say “temporary?”
If you’ll recall, Gore and the Congressional Democrats also supported a tax cut in 2001 – a smaller one, and one that was targeted lower down the income scale. Bush’s legislative accomplishment was to make the tax cut larger, by giving more to high-income earners.
To say that Obama wants to extend part of the tax cut is to say that he wants to eliminate what Bush actually accomplished: the upper-income tax cuts – and it looks like he’s going to get that. This is not exactly a strong argument for the permanence or significant of Bush’s legislative record.
Homeland Security and the bunker mentality that goes with it is bigger than mandated health insurance.
Of course, the PPACA is bigger than mandated health insurance, too. It’s not a good sign if you think that the individual insurance mandate is all, or even most, of Obamacare.
But as to your point, the actual legislative accomplishment – the creation of DHS, moving around departments – is pretty small potatoes. It was also something that was called for by a bipartisan commission in the late 1990s, and had the support of virtually the entire Congress. It really doesn’t demonstrate anything particularly impressive about Bush as a legislator that he was able to get that softball passed.
The needless war in Iraq was also a major (negative) accomplishment.
It was, indeed, but it’s not a legislative accomplishment. No one is arguing that Bush didn’t have a significant record – just that the legislative side of his record is slim. There is more to a presidency than legislation.
It amazes me that ppl still write things that amount to, essentially, saying that Barack Obama somehow in all his misplaced well-meaningness and naivete got himself elected twice and has blundered through a whole term of achievements against what we know he was up against. Is this the flip side of a “scary black man” projection?
I’m quite confident that the Barack Obama I voted for twice is, indeed, the Barack Obama I knew was in there all along, and that I want handling these negotiations.
I’m also certain that I don’t ever want to be on the other side of the table from him.
Boehner never had the votes and never will. We’ll go off the cliff and then we’ll dispense with the debt ceiling. After the republicans truly panic, things will get real.
Worm, turned. Ebb tide, crested. The next 30 years are ours.
Only a few days left to go, but I think there will be a deal and it will be even worse than the one Boehner rejected.
I sincerely hope you are right and I am wrong.