Debt Crisis Shows Obama Lacks Presidential Skills

By MARY KATE CARY

As the negotiations and the vote-getting on raising the debt ceiling have dragged on these last two weeks, it's became clear that President Obama really is not a good negotiator. Several times, just as a deal seemed imminent, the discussions have collapsed—and very publicly. There were leaks from the administration, he-said-she-said accounts from both sides, angry White House press conferences—just a "parade of horribles," as lawyers would call it. The result is a rising tide of public disgust and frustration. Not only has he lost bipartisan support in both the House or the Senate, his lack of ability to persuade people to join his cause has cost President Obama the vital center of the electorate.


According to yesterday's Pew Research national survey, with results collected just this week, only 31 percent of independent voters want to see Obama re-elected, down from 42 percent in May. Two months ago, Obama held a 7 point lead among independent registered voters two months ago, but independent support has swung 15 points the other way, giving an 8 point advantage to a generic Republican. "This is consistent with a drop in Obama's approval among all independents. Currently, a majority (54 percent) disapprove of Obama's performance for the first time in his presidency," according to Pew.


Maybe it's because Hillary Clinton's "three in the morning" ad was right—maybe he just doesn't have the experience to be president. Of the top 100 jobs that would qualify one to be president, being a law professor isn't one of them. A plumber would be better qualified than a law professor. Seriously—a plumber is a problem solver who has to keep customers happy. A used car salesman knows how to close a deal. A UPS deliveryman knows how to meet a deadline. A diplomat knows how to be, well, diplomatic. Meaning he doesn't lecture people about "eating their peas" when he needs them to jump on board.


Think about some of our former presidents and their qualifications for the job. Bill Clinton had been a governor, a job that involves being an executive decision-maker. Ronald Reagan had headed the Screen Actors Guild and worked for General Electric, in addition to being governor. President Bush 41 had served as ambassador to the U.N., liaison to Communist China, head of the RNC during Watergate, director of the CIA during its most difficult years, and had even served as a freshman Republican in a Democratic Congress. Harry Truman had run a men's clothing store that failed in a recession and narrowly escaped bankruptcy—certainly something that would have prepared him for the job today. Surely some of them got elected for reasons other than their qualifications—after all, the desire for economic or political change can be a powerful force among voters, no matter who is running— but certainly some presidents' past experiences helped them once they got in office. 


Peggy Noonan writes today that "the secret of Mr. Obama is that he isn't really very good at politics, and he isn't good at politics because he doesn't really get people."  I think that's right. Being a plumber or a used car salesman—or a union organizer or a men's clothing store owner or the liaison to Communist China—requires you to know how to deal with people and how to negotiate in good faith. Being a law professor doesn't.

Barry's dilemma, the world is watching!

What would the Penguin do to take over Gotham?

Of course, the fish eater was much more transparent!

Why Obama's rhetoric doesn't work...
Matthew Continetti, The Weekly Standard


Since he first appeared on the national stage in the summer of 2004, Barack Obama has stood for national unity. He has said he believes in compromise. He has advertised himself as a post-partisan president who will bridge the divide between liberals and conservatives. During the campaign, Michelle Obama went so far as to say that her husband would fill the "hole in our souls." The country is "fed up," the president said in his July 25 address to the nation, "with a town where compromise has become a dirty word."

Whether Obama truly believes in national unity, or simply says these things for political gain, is irrelevant. Let's assume Obama wants to be a statesman of import who leads the whole country, not just a political party. If that's the case, why does he consistently undermine his calls for unity by pitting one group of Americans against another?

Consider the president's speech this week on the debt ceiling. I can't remember a more transparently cynical attempt by a president to position himself for reelection. On one side, Obama says, are himself, the majority of Americans, and Ronald Reagan, all of whom support a "balanced approach" to deficit reduction. On the other side are "a significant number of Republicans," the "wealthiest Americans," the "biggest corporations," and all those who want to "place a greater burden on working families."

In just a few words, Obama divides the country by party, class, and aspiration. The message of his speech is not that reducing spending will enable all Americans to thrive. In Obama's world of zero-sum politics, one group prospers at another's expense. In the name of fairness, Obama seeks to lead the majority ("middle-class families") against the minority ("millionaires and billionaires").

Obama not only subverts his stated purpose of unity. He threatens his larger purpose of reelection as well. For much of our history, Americans have shown distaste for class-based populist appeals, whether on the right or the left. They have consistently preferred a consensus model of politics in which "a rising tide lifts all boats" and the divide between rich and poor is less important than the American dream of self-improvement. The message that "there is not a liberal America and a conservative America, there is the United States of America" helped Obama win the White House in 2008. His abandonment of consensus politics for coalition politics may help him lose it in 2012.

From Jim Geraghty, Morning Jolt, NRO

Come On, Man, Write It Down Before Somebody Forgets It    It sounds like an Onion story: [Chuck] Todd asked Carney about the White House's reluctance to release its plan to deal with the national debt and raising the debt ceiling. Carney acknowledged the White House was playing games. "We're showing a lot of leg," he said. When Todd pressed for details -- "Why not just release it?" -- Carney seemed surprised. "You need it written down?" What a difference two years makes. In the spring of 2009, with Republicans in the minority in the House of Representatives, the White House and its Democratic allies were demanding specifics. The House GOP had to produce an alternative budget, the White House demanded, in order to show that they were serious about governing. To paraphrase the CBO, they can't score a lot of leg. Guy Benson is left incredulous: Yes, actually, wedoneed "something printed." Since his unmitigated failure of a budget was unanimously defeated in the Senate, this president has refused to offer a specific plan of his own on virtually anything at all. Instead, he talks about "visions" and "contours" and "frameworks" -- and tries to blame his opponents when his poor leadership is exposed. Over the last five days, the president has (a)undermined a bargain with John Boehner by introducing an unacceptable eleventh-hour condition, (b) rejected "out of hand" a bipartisan compromise that he found to be politically unpalatable, and (c) delivered a speech that painted his opponents as the intractable extremists. In light of this behavior, it's entirely reasonable for Americans to wonder what, precisely, Barack Obama's proposed solution might be. Today, the White House dismissively waived off that question as a GOP talking point and condescendingly inquired if the journalist who dared to ask it was capable of taking notes. I'll close with an unsolicited word of advice, and a friendly reminder from the CBO director. The advice: When you're already plumbing new depths of unpopularity, dialing up your arrogance isn't a winning strategy. Even David Brooks finds it unseemly. At Pajamas Media, Bryan Preston sees this as another manifestation of the legendary Obama work ethic: Yes, Jay, the American people elected your boss in the hope that he might occasionally do his job. Show his work. Demonstrate a little competence once in a while. Is that too much to ask? Apparently it is. As we blogged yesterday, Obama's bizarre reticence to lead is as much a headache for his own party as it is for the GOP. Maybe more, since Reid et al just can't come out and blast him the way they would a Republican president. So Congress sidelined him over the weekend, but as long as he's the president he can't really be sidelined: He has to sign something. And agitate against whatever is heading for his desk before he signs it,of course.

Sen. Rubio: "We Don't Need New Taxes, We Need New Taxpayers"

Watch the video... http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/07/07/sen_rubio_we_dont_need_new_taxes_we_need_new_taxpayers.html  

Extract... 

"Our total debt is about to reach the size of our entire economy. That's kind of the framework in which we're operating in when we discuss this. Now, I actually think we're closer to some sort of agreement on this, Sen. Ayotte, than a lot of people realize. 

"I've heard the term thrown around in the last couple days, a 'balanced approach' to dealing with it, and I think there's agreement that there has to be a balanced approach. I certainly have always said that you cannot simply cut your way out of this problem. You have to have a combination of cuts and growth, growth and revenues to government. I think the debate is, how do you accomplish these two things? And I'm not going to focus so much on the cut part of it today. I want to focus on the revenue part of it because that's the part the president and some of my colleagues here have focused on over the last day, this idea of getting more revenue or this new term, 'revenue enhancers,' which is Washington talk for more money to the government.

"And, according to the president, some in his party, most in his party I should say, the idea is simple that...in America that are making a lot of money, more money than maybe they should be making, and they just need to pay more in taxes. And if these people pay more in taxes, then all of these problems will get a lot easier to deal with. That's kind of the viewpoint they bring to this debate.

"Yesterday, we saw, and I know tomorrow the majority leader, we'll be voting here on the floor on something the majority leader has offered up, something called the 'sense of the Senate,' which people watching at home may wonder, 'What is that?' Well, that basically means what's on the Senate's mind. The 'sense of the Senate,' this thing that we're going to be voting on tomorrow, is basically that you've got a bunch of people in this country that make over a million dollars, and that these people need to do more to help with the debt. That's basically the 'sense of the Senate' that there's going to be a vote on tomorrow -- very interesting things.

"So, I looked at it because ultimately this is a serious issue. So, let's explore this with an open mind. Let's not be doctrinaire, let's not be blindly ideological. Let's look at this from a common sense perspective, this idea that all these millionaires and billionaires, if they just paid more taxes, these problems would be solved. Let's analyze it. This is all about math. 

"And here's the fact: the fact is it doesn't solve the problem. First of all, if you taxed these people at 100 percent, basically next year you said, 'Look, every penny you make next year the government's going to take it from you,' it still doesn't solve the debt. Not only does that not solve the debt problem, but I looked at a host of other -- a great publication that came out today from the Joint Economics Committee, our colleague Sen. DeMint chairs it. And it kind of outlines some of the tax increases being proposed by our colleagues in the Democratic Party and the president to solve the debt problem. And you add them all up, you add all of these things up -- the jet airplanes, the oil companies, all of the other things they talk about -- you put them all together in one big batch, and you know what it does? It basically deals with nine days and 23 hours worth of deficit spending. Nine days and 23 hours of deficit spending. That's how much it solves. So all this talk about going after people that make all this money, it buys you nine days and 23 hours. Let's round it off. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt. It buys them 10 days of deficit spending reduction. That's what all this stuff rounds up to.

“So, here's the bottom line: These tax increases they're talking about. These so-called revenue enhancers, they don't solve the problem. So what do we do then? Because clearly we have to do two things.

"One, we have to hold the line on spending, if you keep digging yourself in the hole, the hole is going to bury you. But the other thing is, how do you start generating revenue for government so we can start paying down this debt? And that’s what the debate should be about.

“We already know these taxes they're talking about don't work. So, here's what works. Here is what I would suggest works in a balanced approach, using the president's terminology. Let's stop talking about new taxes and start talking about creating new taxpayers, which basically means jobs. Now, here in Washington, this debt is the number one issue on everyone's mind, and rightfully so. It is a major issue. But everywhere else in the real world, the number one issue on people's minds are jobs. And I'll tell you every other problem facing America -- a mortgage crisis, home foreclosure crisis, this debt problem -- all of these issues get easier to deal with if people are gainfully employed across America. 

"And the impact that unemployment's having across this country is devastating. We hear about unemployment in facts and figures. They give us numbers, Sen. Ayotte, 'Oh, X percent people are unemployed.' Well, there's stories behind every one of those people. You know who a lot of these people are that are unemployed in America? They are people that have done everything they've been asked to do, and they've done it right. Maybe they served their country overseas, maybe they went to college and got a degree and now came back home. Maybe they worked for 10 or 20 years and did a really good job at work, and now, you know what, they can't find a job. Or maybe they were lucky enough to find a job after losing their original job, but it pays them half as much, and they work twice as long. 

"That is the real face of unemployment in America, of people that are hurting. And our job here is to do everything we can to make it easier for them to find a job, not harder. And I think that's what we have to do when it comes to a balanced approach and when we talk about revenue.

“We don't need new taxes. We need new taxpayers, people that are gainfully employed, making money and paying into the tax system. And then we need a government that has the discipline to take that additional revenue and use it to pay down the debt and never grow it again. And that's what we should be focused on, and that's what we're not focused on. 

“So you look at all these taxes that are being proposed, and here's what I say. I say we should analyze every single one of them through the lens of job creation, issue number one in America. I want to know which one of these taxes that they're proposing will create jobs. I want to know how many jobs are going to be created by the plane tax? How many jobs are going to be created by the oil company tax that I heard so much about? How many jobs are created by going after the millionaires and billionaires the president talks about? I want to know: How many jobs do they create?

“Because I'll tell you, and I'm going to turn it over to Sen. Ayotte in a second. I'm interested in her perspective on this as a job creator, as the spouse of a job creator who runs a small business, as someone like me who just came off the campaign trail. Let me tell you something. I traveled the state of Florida for two years campaigning. I have never met a job creator who told me that they were waiting for the next tax increase before they started growing their business. I've never met a single job creator who's ever said to me I can't wait until government raises taxes again so I can go out and create a job.

"And I'm curious to know if they say that in New Hampshire because they don't say that in Florida. And so my view on all this is I want to know how many jobs these tax increases the president proposes will create because if they're not creating jobs and they're not creating new taxpayers, they're not solving the problem."