AN ENGAGEMENT
GAP
After the debt-ceiling debacle, the
White House’s approach changed.
The administration concluded
that legislative negotiations with
House Republicans would forever
be an act of frustration unless they
shaped the public debate first.
“You don’t want to date these
people,” one exasperated top administration official told reporters
on July 22, 2011, the night that the
Boehner-Obama deal imploded.
“I think it was obvious by the
end of the summer 2011 that the
leadership in the House was not
going to go anywhere further than
the minimum amount needed to
avoid fiscal calamity,” explained
Daley, who left the White House
in early 2012.
Led by economic adviser Gene
Sperling and with a push from
Axelrod as well, the president
HUFFINGTON 09.09.12
people began to appropriately ask:
‘What in the world are we doing
here?’” said Stern, before listing
his examples. “The public option,
the lack of a plan about deficit reduction, the Republicans’ willingness to take the country over the
cliff, and the president trying to cut
a back door deal with Boehner as
if he was going to be different than
the rest of the extremists.”
THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION
bad a deal he had struck. The
grand bargain was effectively dead.
Obama went to Boehner looking
for more revenues, but the speaker
walked away.
The president had narrowed an
inside-game strategy even further,
in the hope that direct one-on-one
negotiations might be more fruitful. It had nearly worked. Rep. Paul
Ryan (R-Wisc.), now the presumptive Republican vice presidential nominee, reportedly warned
Boehner that a deal wasn’t just bad
policy but would have effectively
guaranteed Obama’s re-election.
And Obama got credit for his willingness to reach out to Republicans, who, in turn, took a hit in
the polls. But his own party was
alarmed by what he was willing to
give up in the process.
For progressives, the White
House’s inability to see the unbending recalcitrance of congressional Republicans remains the
biggest, most inexplicable shortcoming of the president’s first term
in office. The problem, as Andy
Stern, the former SEIU president,
put it, was not just that Obama
attempted to play the inside game.
It’s that he did so time and time
again without recognizing the utter
pointlessness of the endeavor.
“We were watching the administration lose, and that’s when I think