SALON

Tuesday, Sep 20, 2011 6:31 PM UTC

The upside of being abused by the GOP

The debt ceiling fight wasn't pretty to watch, but it has positioned Obama well to battle the GOP on taxes

By

Topics: Barack Obama, War Room,

The upside of being abused by the GOPMitch McConnell, Barack Obama and John Boehner

It seems logical to conclude that President Obama’s sudden eagerness to pick fights with Republicans means that he’s realized the folly of his “reasonable man” strategy and junked it. But a better way to understand the president’s new confrontational posture is as an extension of that strategy.

The “reasonable” approach, remember, grew out of the GOP’s midterm landslide last fall, with a chastened Obama seeking to win back voters by showing a desire to compromise with Republicans on Capitol Hill. If Republicans reciprocated, the thinking went, Obama would benefit from a surprisingly productive legislative year. And if they rebuffed him, he’d also benefit, since it would expose the GOP as a band of obstructionists bent on advancing a narrow agenda and scoring political points.

The strategy was most prominently on display this summer, when Obama made an elaborate show of offering Republicans a “grand bargain” on deficit reduction that included steep cuts to Medicare and Social Security. Democrats were livid, but Republicans — after stringing Obama along for weeks — still wouldn’t go along, with Speaker John Boehner walking away from the talks just days before the debt ceiling deadline.

According to its design, this should have been a triumphant moment for the “reasonable man” approach. And in a way, it was: When the debt ceiling crisis was finally resolved, polls showed that Americans were much angrier with Republicans over it than they were with Obama. One survey found that just 33 percent of voters viewed the Republican Party favorably — the worst score ever recorded for either major party.

But it was far from a complete triumph, because the widespread anger at the GOP failed to translate into newfound support for Obama, whose overall job approval rating (and standing in head-to-head match-ups with potential 2012 foes) has continued to deteriorate since the debt ceiling fight. In other words, he succeeded in making his opponents look very unreasonable, but didn’t get any points for coming across as reasonable himself.

In a way, though, the debt ceiling experience is a perfect setup for what Obama is now doing. Take his new threat to veto any deficit reduction plan that the congressional supercommittee produces if it doesn’t include more tax revenue from wealthy Americans. No longer is Obama instinctively staking out a compromise-friendly position. How this will be regarded by the public is a fascinating and tricky question. On the one hand, polls consistently show that voters strongly agree with the principles Obama  is now articulating. On the other hand, public opinion is quirky. As Greg Sargent put it today:

Now, Republicans tend to think such polling isn’t that meaningful. Even if it shows public support for high-end tax cuts, Republicans are happy to target Democrats on the issue, because they can continue to make the general charge that Dems are tax-hikers, furthering the narrative of profligate Big Government liberals running off the spending rails. Republicans believe this narrative is very potent with moderates and independents. And there very well may be something to this.

When you factor in the the number of pundits and media outlets proclaiming that Obama is playing to his base and ignoring moderates with his new approach, the danger for the president here becomes obvious.

How can he combat it? Here the damage that he helped inflict on the GOP ‘s image this summer could be very helpful. If his Republican opponents are seen as fundamentally unreasonable ideologues, Obama may have more leeway than he otherwise would to behave “unreasonably” — especially if he is doing it in the name of a principle with which most Americans say they agree. Now when Republicans (or the press) bemoan Obama’s supposed unwillingness to reach across the aisle and compromise, he can reply, “I already tried that, over and over and over” — and there’s a chance voters will know what he means.

Of course, there’s also a chance they won’t, but that’s the risk that comes with being president when the economy is as rotten as this.

Steve Kornacki

Steve Kornacki writes about politics for Salon. Reach him by email at SKornacki@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @SteveKornacki More Steve Kornacki.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 37 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Loaded terminology like "entitlements" and "welfare" skews the debate and alters America. How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government.
324 points325 points | 88 comments
vote
How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government -- "...much of the U.S. economic security support system consists of subsidies for the affluent in the form of tax breaks, like those for private retirement savings plans such as 401(k)s and private employer-provided health insurance."
58 points59 points | 3 comments
vote
Temple Grandin on DSM-5: “Sounds like diagnosis by committee.” When it comes to autism, Grandin argues we're paying too much attention to labels -- and not enough to individuals
32 points33 points | 3 comments
vote
With the help of Photoshop, artist Yao Lu has made shanshui — traditional ink paintings — of China's landfills
30 points31 points | 1 comment
vote
Temple Grandin on DSM-5: “Sounds like diagnosis by committee.” When it comes to autism, Grandin argues we're paying too much attention to labels -- and not enough to individuals
29 points30 points | 2 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations