A failure of leadership: Jonathan Chait and Paul Krugman on Obama, the budget, and the government shutdown that never was

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I haven't written much on the budget/shutdown, mainly because I just haven't had much to say. I never thought a shutdown was likely. Boehner was certainly facing enormous pressure from the right, but most Republicans understood that a shutdown would hurt them politically (if not the country generally), and it was inevitable that a Democratic Party that fears confrontation and that is, for better or worse, all about compromise, would give in. And that's just what happened.

So who won? -- a question Jon Stewart amusingly looked into last night. Well, the Republicans, perhaps, as they came away with fairly significant concessions from the Democrats (even if this was just about domestic discretionary spending), but many on the right aren't happy, whether over the continued funding for Planned Parenthood or over the fact that spending wasn't cut even more -- and while Boehner emerges intact, it's not clear how long he'll be able to hold off the Tea Party. But I'm not really sure the Democrats lost. A shutdown would have been bad for everyone, and so avoiding a shutdown without giving up too much is a sort of "win" for them, as long as they can take the fight to the budget battle still to come and thence into 2012.

And Obama? For a president who is all about compromise, yet another compromise is also a win, and he'll now be able to position himself to secure even greater support from independents when the time comes. He stepped in when he needed to, acted like the mature adult in a world of petulant children, and, however this may irritate progressives (myself included), accepted a deal that will benefit him politically at the expense of fighting the Republicans' disastrous agenda.

That's just the way I see it. I'm not saying I like it.

And the big political problem, it seems to me, is that, once again, Democrats just caved without much of a fight at all, even a symbolic one, except over Planned Parenthood (which, to be fair, is worth fighting for, but it's not the be-all and end-all of federal budget issues), allowing Republicans to secure the upper hand, and a fairly significant "win," despite the fact (forgotten by the media, it seems) that they're still the minority party (controlling the House but not the Senate or the White House) -- even after last November's "shellacking." At TNR yesterday, Jon Chait offered a number of reasons for why this happened. Yes, Democrats are generally more conciliatory (to their credit, perhaps, if not so much in the crucible of legislative politics), and, yes, the issue generally favours Republicans (who can spin their economic and fiscal agenda as "small government" (and who likes taxes? who likes government (until you realize what it does for you)?). But this, to me, is the most convincing explanation:

Republicans were able to credibly threaten a shutdown of the government. That willingness to impose harm on the entire country if they didn’t get a sufficiently friendly outcome proved to be powerful bargaining leverage, moving the goalposts progressively closer to them.

In other words, Republicans are just tougher negotiators, willing to push the country to the brink, or at least to bluff that way, to get their way. It's a game of chicken, and Republicans know that Democrats swerve first. Of course, Democrats should have known better. They should have called that bluff and challenged Republicans to shut down the government. Sure, the government may then have been shut down, but wouldn't Democrats then have "won" politically? At the very least, they would have had a strong case to take to the American people.

But, no. Not this time. Not ever, it seems.

And it doesn't help that Obama himself wasn't really up for a fight. As Paul Krugman writes:

What have they done with President Obama? What happened to the inspirational figure his supporters thought they elected? Who is this bland, timid guy who doesn't seem to stand for anything in particular?

I realize that with hostile Republicans controlling the House, there's not much Mr. Obama can get done in the way of concrete policy. Arguably, all he has left is the bully pulpit. But he isn't even using that -- or, rather, he's using it to reinforce his enemies' narrative.

His remarks after last week's budget deal were a case in point.

Maybe that terrible deal, in which Republicans ended up getting more than their opening bid, was the best he could achieve -- although it looks from here as if the president's idea of how to bargain is to start by negotiating with himself, making pre-emptive concessions, then pursue a second round of negotiation with the G.O.P., leading to further concessions.

And bear in mind that this was just the first of several chances for Republicans to hold the budget hostage and threaten a government shutdown; by caving in so completely on the first round, Mr. Obama set a baseline for even bigger concessions over the next few months. 

I still think Obama succeeded politically, continuing to set himself up nicely for re-election next year. But Krugman is right that he weakened himself and his party over the long run, essentially giving Republicans still more confidence that they can they way, or at least a great deal of their way, just by controlling the House.

It will take more time to sort out who "won" and who "lost" this shutdown battle, but with an absence of principled, determined leadership in the White House, the losers ultimately are the American people, who need something other than the Republican agenda and who have a president who is apparently unwilling to fight for anything at all.