And I'm not even talking about Krugman.
A total failure of presidential leadership.
Why didn't he demand Republicans raise the debt limit, the way Congress has routinely for previous presidents, and stand by that when Republicans inevitably refused? Why didn't he spend more time criticizing Republicans for their values and priorities rather than trying to find accommodations with them? Why didn't he play up the possibility of the 14th Amendment, if only to increase his leverage? Imagine if the president had, from the very beginning, laid out a few key principles and stuck to them: No tying the debt ceiling to deficit reduction; no attacks on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security; no deficit reduction without higher taxes on the rich.
http://www.tnr.com/...
Going back to December, the Democrats committed a massive blunder by failing to push for a debt ceiling increase. At the time, observers like Ezra Klein were noting how absurd it would be to let Republicans force through a deficit-increasing policy (extending the Bush tax cuts) and then let Republicans stick Democrats with the blame for the debt ceiling. A reporter even asked him about the Republican Party’s ability to use this vote as leverage, and Obama seemed not to grasp the point at all. Obama has implied that he couldn’t have received a debt ceiling hike, but I don’t think that’s correct.
Then, last spring, Obama committed blunder number two. Republicans began voicing opposition to raising the debt ceiling, or insisting on massive concessions in order to do so. The correct response here was to refuse to negotiate. Obama simply needed to say, we’re raising the debt ceiling the way we always have, because the alternative is catastrophe. We can negotiate any policy change you want, but not with a gun to the head of the American economy. Eventually, the business community would have pressured Republicans to relent. Instead, once Obama ascented to broadening the scope of the debate, business simply wanted a deal to get done, and it pressured both sides to compromise. (It is true that the complicity of the anti-deficit lobby in the Republican hostage gambit made it harder for Obama to insist on keeping the deficit and the debt ceiling separate.)
The third mistake lay in assuming Republicans would agree to raise tax revenue. I spoke several times with administration officials who asserted with total confidence that Republicans would simply have to acknowledge the need for more revenue. They betrayed a complete misunderstanding of the party they’re dealing with.
http://www.tnr.com/...
More than a year ago, the President could have conditioned his agreement to extend the Bush tax cuts beyond 2010 on Republicans’ agreement not to link a vote on the debt ceiling to the budget deficit. But he did not.
Many months ago, when Republicans first demanded spending cuts and no tax increases as a condition for raising the debt ceiling, the President could have blown their cover. He could have shown the American people why this demand had nothing to do with deficit reduction but everything to do with the GOP’s ideological fixation on shrinking the size of the government — thereby imperiling Medicare, Social Security, education, infrastructure, and everything else Americans depend on. But he did not.
And through it all the President could have explained to Americans that the biggest economic challenge we face is restoring jobs and wages and economic growth, that spending cuts in the next few years will slow the economy even further, and therefore that the Republicans’ demands threaten us all. Again, he did not.
http://robertreich.org/...
We did not have to reach this pass. At any of several points in the past two years, a Democratic president could have called out the Republicans on the sheer perversity of the policies they are demanding. Most voters do not want cuts in Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. The Paul Ryan "Roadmap for America's Future" alone, in the hands of a politically competent Democratic president, should have been enough to destroy Republican credibility. If you want to see what an eloquent, and politically persuasive Democratic leader looks like, listen to Nancy Pelosi's floor speech from Saturday. Had Obama spoken with this clarity, the Republican program and politics could have been exposed and quarantined. But this week it was Pelosi who was isolated by the game the White House was playing. Tactically, House Democrats were opposing the Boehner bill and supporting Sen. Harry Reid's plan to get a debt extension without sacrificing Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security. But as the weekend wore on, the Reid Plan came to look more and more like the Boehner plan. Democrats, from Obama on down, never should have accepted the premise that economic policy in 2011 was about deficit reduction. Once that became the game, Republicans were able to play chicken with the national debt. For the most part, the mainstream media -- with the exception of much of the New York Times coverage and its intelligent editorials -- have been in the role of enablers, treating the debt ceiling as if it were the main story. Assuming the deal is finalized, the headlines and talking-head commentary will trumpet the narrow avoidance of a default, missing the point entirely. The politics of default were always an artificial creation by Republicans. The real story is that Republicans played President Obama like a violin
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Will try to update as more come in.