Accepting Duncan’s invitation to revisit my contemporaneous analysis of the debt ceiling negotiations and compare it to what I said earlier today, I agree that there isn’t much contradiction. I think, although I am not certain, that I wrote the 2011 piece immediately after getting off a conference call with the White House. It just seems to me that that post reflected pretty strongly what the White House was saying privately at the time. The headline leads me to that conclusion, too.
Ultimately, I was half right and half wrong. I was right that the White House felt that they had the upper hand and would not be making big concessions. I was right that it was nearly impossible to envision Boehner doing a deal because he’d need Democratic votes. I was right that he’d probably never survive if he made that deal. I was wrong to predict that Boehner would cave to his big donors rather than his Tea Party base.
It’s also possible that I was engaged in a bit of psychological warfare at the time, which admittedly sometimes creeps into my analysis when the stakes are high enough.
But, on the whole, I am not sure why Duncan chose that particular piece for a contrast because it doesn’t really touch on the main question I raised, which was what the administration really wanted to happen at the time.