Playing the Man: Defeating Obama With the Debt Ceiling

By Adam Yoshida

 

If President Obama's decidedly un-presidential explosion at House Majority Leader Eric Cantor during a White House meeting on Wednesday suggests anything, it's that the stress is getting to the man.  Everything that we've ever seen suggests that the president is fairly thin-skinned.  As someone who had virtually everything in his life handed to him -- and who made it nearly to the age of fifty living in isolated realms (Hawaii prep schools, Ivy League universities, Chicago Democratic politics) where he'd never have to even speak to, let alone deal seriously with, a genuine conservative -- he's not someone used to dealing with those who disagree with his premises.  This gives the GOP an opening.

Politically, the Democrats still hold more power.  Control of the White House and the Senate ensures that Republicans will not be able to get the sort of genuine reforms -- serious changes to entitlements, pro-growth tax reform, broad spending cuts, government reorganization -- that will genuinely end the debt crisis.  Even assuming that the president is reelected in 2012, the contours of the 2012 political battlefield make it at least a 50/50 proposition that the Republicans will control the Senate as well come January 3, 2013.  Therefore, there is little political incentive for Republicans to strike a "Grand Bargain" at the present time -- especially in light of the fact that one can be certain that, whatever its details, the media will credit such a deal to Obama and use it to kick-start the sort of "shift-to-the-center" narrative that he'll need in order to win another term.  With these considerations in mind, the correct Republican strategy for the debt ceiling is to play the man, not the ball.

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