Dana Milbank has advice for the president post-shutdown.
Rep. Darrell Issa (Calif.) detected "a policy of leading from behind, of indecision” in Syria. Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) said Obama's "strategy of leading from behind meant [Moammar] Qaddafi's weapons stockpiles went unsecured.” ...
But the last use of the phrase I could find in the Congressional Record was on Oct. 2, at the start of the shutdown, when Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said Obama had been "once again attempting to lead from behind in a crisis."
They aren't saying that now.
Obama got out in front of the shutdown and debt-ceiling standoff. He took a firm position — no negotiating — and he made his case to the country vigorously and repeatedly. Republicans miscalculated, assuming he would again give in. The result was the sort of decisive victory rarely seen in Washington skirmishes.
The reasonable position doesn't mean compromising with the unreasonable. So, what does Milbank want Obama to do now?
The agreement ending the shutdown requires Congress to come up with a budget by Dec. 13 . It’s a chance — perhaps Obama’s last chance — to tackle big issues such as tax reform and restructuring Medicare.
Ah, yes. Obama should use his victory not to push through immigration reform or to promote legislation to create jobs, but to "tackle tax reform" (read: cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations) and "restructure Medicare" (read: reduce coverage for old people). Which would be... exactly what the GOP would push through if they had won. Next...
Ruth Marcus also has advice for the guy who just won the battle by not taking pundit's advice.
The federal government has reopened and is paying its bills, but the political system remains fundamentally gridlocked and the definition of success going forward depressingly unambitious. Forget the “grand bargain.” We’re talking smallish tweaks, and even those won’t come easily.
But — and brace yourself for a bit of heresy — some well-timed Democratic flexibility on the need for new taxes might help break the logjam.
...a deal that would buy down some of the “sequester” cuts to discretionary spending by replacing them with trims to the entitlement programs that are at the heart of the budget problem.
See, if President Obama will only give the Republicans the cuts in entitlements they want, and give up on the increases in revenue that he wants, we'll have a golden age of bipartisanship! In other words, if we can only convince the president that the way forward is completely forgetting what just worked for him last week...
I think Milbank and Marcus need to look up the definition of "win."
Come on in, let's see who else is confused.
David Leonhardt sees the connection between firm convictions and... what's that word again? Winning.
Mr. Obama trounced the Republicans last week with a Hillaryesque strategy of holding firm and winning an argument, not by finding common ground. He, his advisers and Congressional Democrats decided from the start that trading changes to the health care law for the reopening of the government and the lifting of the debt ceiling would merely encourage Republicans to create future showdowns.
When the face-off ended and the government reopened Thursday, Mr. Obama kept up the pressure. “You don’t like a particular policy or a particular president?” he asked. “Then argue for your position. Go out there and win an election.”
In those words was a hint of a new strategy that suddenly seems less far-fetched — more available to the White House — than it did when large parts of the government closed on Oct. 1.
Yes, Mr. Obama’s immediate task will involve returning to the negotiating table, to talk about a budget deal. But he has spent much of the past five years overestimating his ability to find common ground on such issues. The White House has come to believe that many Republicans are interested only in victory, not in compromise-laden deals that, say, trade Medicare cuts for new taxes on the affluent or trade a more secure border for a path to citizenship.
To which many of us wincing on the sidelines can only say
finally. What's Leonhardt's advice?
Mr. Obama now seems more willing to play the victory game. He can make the case (supported by polling) that his positions on several major issues — including immigration and taxes — enjoy more public support than Republican positions. If there are still no deals to be had, Mr. Obama and his fellow Democrats can concentrate, albeit quietly, on highlighting their differences with Republicans and taking their case to the voters in next year’s midterm election.
Wait? When do we cement our victory by cutting Social Security and a fresh round of giveaways to billionaires? That can't be right.
I like the thought that these tactics are Hillaryesque. I'm looking forward to eight years of them.
Leonard Pitts just wants to do a little celebrating, only...
Yay.
Yippee.
Woo hoo, even.
It was a nick of time rescue, like when Polly Pureheart is whisked off the railroad tracks right before the train comes barreling through, or the correct wire is snipped and the bomb timer stops counting down with just seconds left.
Last week, hours before a historic default, Congress finally stopped playing chicken with the world’s largest economy and ended the government shutdown.
So . . . hurray, right?
Huzzah, right?
Crisis averted, lessons learned, common sense restored. Everything’s good, is it not?
Well, no. Not even close.
Pardon the pooping of the party, but it’s hard to cheer the aversion of a crisis that:
A) Was entirely manufactured.
B) Will in all likelihood recur very soon.
But Leonard, Ruth Marcus says the GOP has learned its lesson and will never, ever do anything like this again. No siree. So now, about those Social Security cuts...
Kathleen Parker focuses her advice on her fellow Republicans.
...much can happen between now and the midterm elections next year, when Republicans hope to hold the House and gain the Senate — and Democrats intend to hold the Senate and recover the House.
Each respective goal is equally possible depending on the same single significant determinant: whether Ted Cruz stops talking.
While that thought settles in, we pause to note that, right now, the idea that Republicans could convince anyone that they should be allowed to deliver milk, much less hold the nation’s purse strings, seems remote. But things do change quickly around here. With the debt crisis postponed and the government up and running again — faith in the efficiency of which underscores the direness of our political straits — most Americans will settle into the season’s serial holiday distractions and move right along.
And hence comes the Great White Republican Hope -- forgetfulness. If only Americans will get distracted, and only Ted Cruz will shut up long enough to let us all forget what just happened, maybe, just maybe, the Republicans will be okay. And while voter forgetfulness may be a given, Ted Cruz shutting up... that would take a miracle.
What lies ahead is the GOP’s internal struggle to determine which wing of the party prevails. And which wing prevails likely will determine the balance of power come 2014. Suffice to say, if Cruz’s voice drowns out the so-called establishment voices, Republicans may as well start investing in camels. The desert awaits.
Ted of... where? Not Arabia, that's been done. The Atacama? That may be the only place dry enough to soak up Cruz's constant spray of spittle.
Jennifer Rubin continues her amusing attempt to distance herself from the tea she swam in so willingly lo these many months.
It’s no secret the Republican Party is dealing with a right-wing contingent, which is small but loud and which threatens to run the party off the rails. ...
Republicans really,
really count on people being forgetful, don't they? Let's see what the new, Cruz-hating Rubin wants from her party.
There are successful primary challenges from the center against Republican shutdown advocates.
Mainstream Republicans in primaries start using their opponents’ support for the shutdown in attack ads.
Republican candidates don’t want to campaign with GOP Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) ...
An endorsement by the Senate Conservatives’ Fund is considered the kiss of death for Republicans.
Who is this woman, and have the police been by to see what she did with Jennifer Rubin?
Now that the immediate crisis is averted, Ross Douthat is back to shilling for GOP talking points and Maureen Dowd is back to playing 8th grade mean girl, so... off to the George Will Pre-Memorial Perpetual Darkness with the both of them.
Steven Pearlstein looks at how the Great Greenspan got through the fiscal crisis with all his delusions intact. Greenspan, you magnificent bastard! he read your book!
What we find... is that Greenspan’s journey of discovery brings him right back to where he began — to an unshakable faith in free markets, an antipathy toward market regulation, and a conviction that progressive taxes and social spending are to blame for slow growth, stagnant wages and exploding deficits.
Those who have followed his career know that it was Greenspan who gave the green light to bank consolidation, Greenspan who pushed financial deregulation, Greenspan who advocated new global rules that would have reduced bank capital reserves and Greenspan who blocked efforts to crack down on abusive subprime lending. But if you are looking for him to accept any responsibility for the crisis that ensued, you will be sorely disappointed.
Instead, he shifts the blame to subsequent policymakers for bailing out the financial system and imposing “massive” new regulation that, he asserts without proof, has cast “a pall of uncertainty” over the economy and ushered in an era of “crony capitalism.”
Being Ayn Rand's boy toy means never having to say you're sorry. Atlas shrugs off all personal responsibility!
Robert Earle Howells points up what people don't understand about America's best idea.
It’s a shame that the parks, usually a source of national pride, became rhetorical pawns amid a national embarrassment. But while the parks still have the country’s attention, it’s worth clearing up some myths about them.
1. The parks’ financial problems are over now that the government shutdown has ended and tourism has resumed.
...entry fees, which are kept low to ensure access for everyone, cover less than 6 percent of park upkeep costs. The federal government makes up most of the rest, and year after year, Congress votes to give less and less. The National Park Service budget is 15 percent lower than it was a decade ago in today’s dollars, 13 percent lower than three years ago. Sequestration cuts have made the situation even worse.
2. States should take a bigger role in managing the parks.
... as much as I applaud Utah for getting its parks reopened, let’s remember that it’s a state eager to plunder its public lands for coal, uranium, natural gas and off-road recreation. If Utah gets its way, Coal Hollow Mine, on the stoop of Bryce Canyon National Park, will soon be allowed to expand its strip-mining operation on 3,500 acres of public land. Utah also fought the establishment of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. This is one state government that I’d rather not see managing national parks.
Lisa Grossman looks at the Swamp Moon of Saturn
Among the many moons in our solar system, Titan is the most eerily Earth-like. It is the only other solid body to host a thick atmosphere and to have rainstorms, rivers and lakes. But unlike Earth, chilly Titan's liquids are methane and ethane. Titan also neatly divides its surface features into horizontal bands. The poles are covered with hydrocarbon lakes and boast few craters, while the equator is a vast dune field peppered with impact scars. The mid-latitudes are nearly featureless expanses, dubbed the Bland-lands.
"The complete lack of craters near the poles… People have noticed this for a while, but nobody's had any good explanations," says Catherine Neish of the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne. She wondered if craters there are simply melting away because the meteorites are landing in vast hydrocarbon swamps.
Okay, so it's not the Venusian dinosaur swamps I grew dreaming about, but still... pretty cool. In fact,
really cool -- as in about −180 °C.