{"id":6377,"date":"2023-05-30T07:47:07","date_gmt":"2023-05-30T11:47:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/?p=6377"},"modified":"2023-07-13T11:25:05","modified_gmt":"2023-07-13T15:25:05","slug":"smarter-than-you-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/index.php\/2023\/05\/30\/smarter-than-you-think\/","title":{"rendered":"Smarter than You Think"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Frustration<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

For weeks I\u2019ve been frustrated.\u00a0\u00a0The \u201cDebt Ceiling\u201d debate, waged on the Nightly News and twenty-four\/seven on cable, has been all Kevin McCarthy.\u00a0\u00a0McCarthy set the tone, making the President the \u201cbad guy\u201d who refused to negotiate.\u00a0\u00a0McCarthy talked about how there couldn\u2019t be a deal without more compromise.\u00a0\u00a0The Speaker used his “bully pulpit” to be the \u201cgood guy\u201d, trying to \u201csave money\u201d for the American people.\u00a0\u00a0He painted Democrats as \u201cloose spending, liberals with a \u2018woke\u2019 agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In short, Speaker McCarthy and the Freedom Caucus Republicans were winning the \u201cmessaging\u201d war.  The White House seemed to be sitting on its hands, with Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre constantly on defense.  It was frustrating, particularly on an issue where Congress created the whole debt obligation in the first place.  If they decided not to spend the money, then there wouldn\u2019t be a debt.  But since they DID pass the laws spending the money, Congress itself created the obligation to pay it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hostage <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

And now, they were (are?) holding the Nation hostage to their agenda:\u00a0\u00a0give us what we want, or we will throw the entire economy into disaster.\u00a0\u00a0It should be an easy message for the White House to \u201csell\u201d: it’s Congress’s mess to clean up. But the Administration did little to fight the battle in the media.\u00a0\u00a0It was frustrating for me, to say the least.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is, until former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki explained what the President was doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the former \u201cvoice\u201d of the White House, Psaki shared her frustration with the messaging war.\u00a0\u00a0But she made a very important point:\u00a0\u00a0that the \u201cwar\u201d wasn\u2019t really about messaging.\u00a0\u00a0The \u201cwar\u201d was to avoid a US Government debt default and the catastrophic national and world consequences that would occur.\u00a0\u00a0It wasn\u2019t that the White House didn\u2019t care about the messaging, but was focused instead on the result.\u00a0\u00a0If a deal could be reached, then in the end, President Biden could take the credit for saving the economy.\u00a0\u00a0If the negotiations failed, then Biden would share in the blame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Public v Private<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The problem with all of the public posturing is that positions get \u201cfrozen\u201d.  If you promise something publicly, then failure to achieve that promise is just that, a public failure.  It makes private negotiations difficult, because the public promises become \u201cdeal breakers\u201d.   Those \u201cdeal breakers\u201d break both ways too.  What McCarthy promises in public his Freedom Caucus backers demand he achieve in private.  And Biden also has a constituency to worry about: the \u201cProgressive Caucus\u201d in the House and Senate who already feel like they been left \u201cholding the bag\u201d on earlier legislative efforts.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Progressives aren\u2019t going to like any deal with McCarthy.  Members like Congressman Jamie Raskins of Maryland demand that instead of negotiating, President Biden invoke an obscure and untested clause of the Fourteenth Amendment<\/a>. They want Biden to ignore the Republicans and order the Treasury Department to continue to borrow money.  That\u2019s the kind of Constitutional confrontation Biden avoids, like proposals to re-balance the Supreme Court by increasing the number of Justices on the bench, or ending the Senate filibuster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Binary Choice<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

So the President hasn\u2019t said what his team demanded, or, more importantly, what they were willing to give away.\u00a0\u00a0That\u2019s all going to come out, now that there\u2019s a deal on the table.\u00a0\u00a0The extremes of both parties will have to decide whether to be responsible for accepting the deal, or tanking the economy.\u00a0That \u201cbinary choice\u201d should be enough to get compromise through (though the key word there is \u201cshould\u201d), with more moderate Democrats joining with “less Freedom Caucus-ie” Republicans. And that\u2019s what President Biden wants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaker McCarthy has his own problems.  While he may have won the short-term messaging battle, now he\u2019s going to have to convince some of his core Republican backers to accept much less than he publicly demanded.  For a man who fought for weeks to become Speaker, only squeaking by on the fifteenth ballot by a few votes; any opposition could cost him the Speakership.  Those same Freedom Caucus members were able to push John Boehner out of the Speaker\u2019s job in 2015, and are a thousand-fold more powerful now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Friday the news broke that there was \u201ca deal\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0Congress went home for the Memorial Day weekend, and the President stayed at nearby Camp David for the holiday.\u00a0\u00a0Come Tuesday, the details of the agreement will break, and both sides will begin the hard task of convincing their \u201cfriends\u201d that the deal is worth their sacrificing cherished changes.\u00a0\u00a0What happens now in the hallways and offices of the Congress will be intense.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both sides will declare \u201cvictory\u201d in the end; but if a default is avoided, then Joe Biden is the real winner, of the messaging, and the war. He’s smarter than you think.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frustration For weeks I\u2019ve been frustrated.\u00a0\u00a0The \u201cDebt Ceiling\u201d debate, waged on the Nightly News and twenty-four\/seven on cable, has been all Kevin McCarthy.\u00a0\u00a0McCarthy set the tone, making the President the \u201cbad guy\u201d who refused to negotiate.\u00a0\u00a0McCarthy talked about how there couldn\u2019t be a deal without more compromise.\u00a0\u00a0The Speaker used his “bully pulpit” to be the … Continue reading “Smarter than You Think”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nSmarter than You Think : Our America - Essays on Politics and American Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/index.php\/2023\/05\/30\/smarter-than-you-think\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Smarter than You Think : Our America - Essays on Politics and American Life\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Frustration For weeks I\u2019ve been frustrated.\u00a0\u00a0The \u201cDebt Ceiling\u201d debate, waged on the Nightly News and twenty-four\/seven on cable, has been all Kevin McCarthy.\u00a0\u00a0McCarthy set the tone, making the President the \u201cbad guy\u201d who refused to negotiate.\u00a0\u00a0McCarthy talked about how there couldn\u2019t be a deal without more compromise.\u00a0\u00a0The Speaker used his “bully pulpit” to be the … Continue reading "Smarter than You Think"\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/index.php\/2023\/05\/30\/smarter-than-you-think\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Our America - 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