In a prime time address, on Monday July 25, 2011, President Obama demonstrated precisely why he is unfit to occupy the White House.
This is the address that a great president would have made to an increasingly worried public:
“My fellow Americans:
I come to engage in conversation with you this evening about the dangerous debt crisis that confronts our nation in order to reassure you that the debt ceiling will be raised and a down-grading of the U.S. debt will not occur. Let me explain the nature of this crisis.
The crisis reflects two realities. First, it is important for all of us to understand that the U.S. national debt has increased dramatically over the last three years – from 40 per cent of gross domestic product in 2008 to 72 per cent in 2011 and rising. This has occurred because of a fall in tax revenues during the recession coupled with a significant increase in government spending, partly brought about by automatic stabilizers but accentuated by three major stimulus packages. Unless this is addressed effectively, U.S. Treasurys will be downgraded whether or not the debt ceiling is increased. Second, U.S. Treasurys will be downgraded on August 2, 2011 if the debt ceiling is not increased, because that ceiling will be breached on that date as a consequence of daily spending exceeding daily revenues as an inevitable consequence of budgetary decisions that are currently effective.
From this perspective, simply increasing the debt ceiling cannot prevent a credit downgrade. For that will do nothing to correct the ongoing imbalance between revenues and spending. Now, in dealing with this issue, in a divided political arena, I must tell you that I have made two serious errors of judgment, for which I come to ask your forgiveness. First, I entered the debt debate far too late. I should have focused my State of the Union Address on this issue several months ago, when my Debt Commission reported clearly and effectively on the magnitude of the problem. Instead, I wasted that opportunity in presenting a broader progressive statement that largely went unheeded in the new more conservative domestic climate following the 2010 elections.
Second, I negotiated an essentially fair deal with Speaker John Boehner several days ago that had a genuine chance of legislative success. That deal called for some $4 trillion of spending cuts over ten years, including sensible structural reforms to Medicare and Medicaid, supplemented by a modest increase in revenues deemed unlikely to throw the U.S. economy back into a recession. With some presidential pressure placed on my fellow- Democrats in the Senate, I feel sure that this deal would have been successful. Unfortunately, I allowed myself to be trapped into a serious negotiating blunder. Knowing that ex-Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not have the political weight to abort the deal, I should have avoided entering into post-deal discussions with her that resulted in my breaching the hand-shake deal with the Speaker and demanding some $400 billion of increased revenues over the ten year period. That request was a breach of trust on my part, and a deal-breaker for Speaker John Boehner.
So, tonight I acknowledge publicly why the fair deal that had been negotiated between myself and the Speaker broke down and I apologize to the Speaker for this error, which resulted from my limited experience in dealing at this highest level of political negotiation. I ask Speaker Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to join me at 6 am tomorrow morning in the Oval Office in order to reconstitute the elements of that fair deal. If we are successful, I intend to shake hands with both fine political leaders and great Americans on that deal before a full press gathering on the lawns of the White House.
God bless America
Barack Obama, the People’s President
Tags: apologize and move back to handshake deal, ignore defeated minority leader in the House, prime time address that President Obama should have given
July 26, 2011 at 2:26 pm |
People who voted Obama into office overwhelmingly don’t want this deal, don’t like it and don’t consider it in the least fair. Whether they are right or not is beyond the point. It’s Obama’s duty to express the wishes of his voters, not Boehners or anybody else’s.
Agreeing to the deal for him would amount to a complete betrayal of trust of people who voted for him. Boehner was probably not one of them.
July 26, 2011 at 2:54 pm |
Clarissa:
In my judgment, your argument downplays a fundamental difference between a president and any other politician. Surely a president is elected through an Electoral College whose majority reflects a particular segment of the population. Nevertheless, he is President of all the People. When the political mood shifts, as it clearly did in 2010, and when a new crisis emerges, the statesman will respond to the best of his ability to resolve the crisis. If this means abandoning for a time some part of his voter support group, that is what he will do. Bill Clinton understood this completely when he negotiated a welfare reform intervention that was anathema to the left-wing of his party. By doing so he saved his presidency, and enormously helped his country.
In 1845 Sir Robert Peel, the Tory Prime Minister led his party into repealing the Corn Laws, even though that legislative change would hammer the economic interests of the landowners, the base of his party. He won the battle, lost his Prime Ministership but went down into history as a major contributor to the wealth of his nation.
That is what one expects of a president. Not politics as usual.