"[T]his is a president who is not afraid to use his power. He is not afraid to issue executive orders when he sees fit."

"I find it stunning, truly, that this president and the Democratic party continues to lay all the blame for their failure to achieve anything at the feet of the tea party or Ted Cruz or whoever the latest villain is. The truth is, this man is the President of the United States. He could get immigration reform, as one example, tomorrow. If he would step forward and say, 'I applaud and salute the gang of eight's proposal. Let's move forward and go beyond that...'"

Carly Fiorina was sharp and pithy on "Meet the Press" today.  

She was interrupted by Chris Matthews, who yammered a lot and was the opposite of sharp and pithy.

Also on the show, Fiorina's California rival Gavin Newsom, who was so noticeably dumber than she that I felt sorry for him, or I would have felt sorry for him if he didn't hold any power and didn't have the advantage of being a handsome bastard. He kept using inane food metaphors. Not just the old, oft-misused cliché "the proof's in the pudding," but also one I'd never heard and never want to hear again, "You wanna move the mouse, you gotta move the cheese," which he immediately rephrased as "We've got to change incentives in this country for good behavior, and not the kinda behavior we're seeing." He's calling the people mice? He wants to manipulate us with cheese? Is this related to that book "Who Moved My Cheese?" Or is this another Thomas Friedmanism? I see that back in 2011, Friedman was on NPR, pushing a book, and saying:

"Move the cheese; move the mouse. Don't move the cheese; mouse doesn't move... So right now, all the incentives of these two parties are to behave in really bad ways for the country. The only way to change that is to show them the [voter] — the cheese — is over here."

Congressional Democrats whine that their boyfriend never calls them.

Politico reports.

Interviews with dozens of members of Congress and senior aides reveal frustration and in some cases exasperation.... These Democrats say they almost never hear from Obama personally... [T]he president evidences no interest in getting to know them or their political circumstances....

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), an early Obama supporter in 2008 and top surrogate in that race, put it this way: “Everyone loves a touch. It’s not his favorite part of the job. But it’s a necessary part of the job.”

Everyone loves a touch....

To bring up the topic of Obama and his old colleagues with members of Congress themselves, not a class of people lacking in pride, is often to get stared back with daggers. Hemming and hawing often take place, good-sport recollections of always hearing back from staff are brought up and occasionally come requests to go off the record....

[T]he tensions flared anew when Democrats on the Hill got a cursory heads-up just a day before Obama’s campaign apparatus announced plans to become a new political entity aimed at pushing through the president’s agenda. The first time it came up, said this official, was at a “this is what we’re doing” briefing the day before it was made public.

"In this bill we will nullify anything the president does that smacks of legislation."

"And there are several of the executive orders that appear as if he’s writing new law. That cannot happen.... I’m afraid that President Obama may have this 'king complex' sort of developing, and we’re going to make sure it doesn’t happen."

ADDED: "If not good law, there was worldly wisdom in the maxim attributed to Napoleon that 'The tools belong to the man who can use them.' We may say that power to legislate for emergencies belongs in the hands of Congress, but only Congress itself can prevent power from slipping through its fingers."

Obama resorts to the "if there’s even one life that can be saved" rhetoric.

"If there is even one thing we can do to reduce this violence, if there’s even one life that can be saved, we’ve got an obligation to try."

These are his gun control proposals, including those executive actions that don't require any of that troublesome interaction with Congress.

I loathe the absurd argument that if there is only one life to be saved then we must do something. Obviously, we do not follow that logic generally. For good reason!

IN THE COMMENTS: elkh1 said:

The mother saved three lives, hers and her twin sons' by firing five shots at an intruder.

"if there’s even one life that can be saved, we’ve got an obligation to try." We must require every citizen 18 and up to own a gun for protection. 

"The president is going to act... Executive order, executive action that can be taken; we haven't decided what that is yet."

"But we're compiling it all with the help of the attorney general and all the rest of the cabinet members as well as legislative action, we believe, is required."

Gun control, it's coming, we don't know exactly how we're going to do it, but we're going to do it without the assistance of Congress, says VP Joe Biden.

Yes, yes, I know, fiscal cliff jumped back from.

We'd gone off, we were told yesterday, but somehow, from mid-air, we scrambled back. We were Wile E. Coyote out off the cliff, suspended, despite gravity, but unlike Wile E. Coyote, we already knew it, we'd been obsessing and blabbing about it for weeks. Unlike Wile E. Coyote, we didn't stay up because of ignorance of where we were and realization of where we were didn't make us plummet. We were somehow able to get back on the cliff, and it was exactly as if we'd never gone off the cliff.

It's almost as if there was never a cliff!

On "Meet the Press" today, Obama mostly came across as the moderate, pragmatic politician I like.

Now, I'm not a sucker for mere posing, and in fact, I get suspicious when I hear what are simply assertions of pragmatism:

But generally if you look at how I've tried to govern over the last four years and how I'll continue to try to govern, I'm not driven by some ideological agenda. I am a pretty practical guy. And I just want to make sure that things work. And one of the nice things about never having another election again, I will never campaign again, is I think you can rest assured that all I care about is making sure that I leave behind an America that is stronger, more prosperous, more stable, more secure than it was when I came into office.

Well, no, I'm not going to rest assured. Much as I would love these statements to be true, they make me nervous. And that assurance came right after the most partisan thing he said in the whole interview. The moderator, David Gregory, had asked Obama how "frustrated" he was about the difficulty of getting things done with Congress. Gregory asserted that people were constantly coming up to him saying "Don't they realize, all of them, the president, Republicans and Democrats, how frustrated we all are?" And President Obama showed a little irritation:

Well, I think we're all frustrated. The only thing I would caution against, David, is I think this notion of, "Well, both sides are just kind of unwilling to cooperate." And that's just not true. I mean if you look at the facts, what you have is a situation here where the Democratic party, warts and all, and certainly me, warts and all, have consistently done our best to try to put country first.

Country first. Where'd he come up with that slogan?



Then Obama started inching away from this assertion that the Democrats are better. He shifts to more neutral boilerplate about trying "to work with everybody involved to make sure that we've got an economy grows" and "Make sure that it works for everybody. Make sure that we're keeping the country safe." Then he retreats again, making abstract concessions (in question form):

And does the Democratic party still have some knee jerk ideological positions and are there some folks in the Democratic party who sometimes aren't reasonable? Of course. That's true of every political party.

So are the Democrats better or not? He's melted into squishy blandness. And it's exactly here that he does the not-an-ideologue/practical-guy riff that appears at the beginning of this post.

Cliff jumpers.

"A growing bloc of emboldened liberals say they’re not afraid to watch defense spending get gouged and taxes go up on every American if a budget deal doesn’t satisfy their priorities."

Here’s what these progressives fear: an agreement that keeps lower tax rates for the wealthy, hits the social safety net with unpalatable cuts and leaves Pentagon spending unscathed. In other words, they’d rather walk the country off the cliff than watch President Barack Obama cave on long-held liberal priorities.

"At this stage, Republicans would do best to cut their losses and find a way to extend the payroll holiday quickly."

Says the very nervous Wall Street Journal:

Then go home and return in January with a united House-Senate strategy that forces Democrats to make specific policy choices that highlight the differences between the parties on spending, taxes and regulation. Wisconsin freshman Senator Ron Johnson has been floating a useful agenda for such a strategy. The alternative is more chaotic retreat and the return of all-Democratic rule.

"If this was an attempt to make Republicans look unreasonable, then, in almost every conceivable way, it failed spectacularly."

"And scheduling the speech during the GOP debate, even if Boehner had immediately acceded, is the one way the White House could guarantee a) that fewer voters would be watching and that b) viewers and pundits would pay less attention to the speech’s content and more to the theatrics around it. In other words, it’s the easiest way to lessen the speech’s chances at success. If this is a preview of Obama’s re-election campaign, Democrats should be very worried."

WaPo's James Downie.

But wait. It occurs to me that Obama may want to divert attention from the speech's content. What do you think the content is? For a month, he's been saying the big speech is coming — he's got a plan to restore jobs. If he really had an answer to the chronic problem, why didn't he reveal it right away? He's been working on something that would sound like he's got an answer, and, in all likelihood, he knew it wouldn't go through Congress, so the point was simply to be able to say: It's Congress's fault. I had a plan, but they wouldn't pass it. But he couldn't say that unless he really had a plan that would impress people. My guess is: He didn't even have that. That's why he reverted to the theatrics, lame as they were.

We'll see. It's my hypothesis. He went for theatrics because the actual content of the speech will be an embarrassing fizzle after the big build-up. His bluff was called, so the theatrics look particularly lame, but he may even prefer our gabbing about the lameness of the failed theatrics to our scrutiny of the actual substance of the plan.

"Obama Rolls Out a Jobs Plan That Doesn't Need Congress."

According to The Atlantic:

[Yesterday], Obama took a now-familiar path in adopting a program — this time a jobs and infrastructure effort--that can happen entirely within his domain. Obama directed several federal agencies to identify "high-impact, job-creating infrastructure projects" that can be expedited now, without congressional approval.

One week before he will make a major address to Congress on jobs, Obama is making sure they know he plans to move forward without them. The president has also directed the Education Department to come up with a "Plan B" updating the 2001 No Child Left Behind law in the absence of congressional action. The message to Congress is clear: Do your work or we'll do it for you....

Do your work or we'll do it for you....  Is that the tone Obama actually wants to take?

"I think, frankly, he’s in over his head as to what to do about this economy."

Cantor on Obama.

Satan sandwich!

That's another meme... another phrase that will stick with us as we stumble forward into 2012:

A fantastic bit of rhetoric from an enraged leftist Democrat in the House, responding to the outlines of the budget deal: Emanuel Cleaver, a pastor from Missouri, described it as a “sugar-coated Satan sandwich.” And indeed it is. There are no good options for liberal/Left Democrats in the House. If they vote against the bill en masse, they will make Obama look as though he has betrayed his own core principles, and indeed, they may lead to the deal’s collapse if a few more Republicans than agreed to the Boehner bill yesterday decide to vote no. Should that happen, they will destroy the Obama presidency. But if they agree, they are eating that sandwich. 

Obviously, the expression is shit sandwich. You can't say that (yet) in Congress and in mainstream political debate. But how do you substitute Satan for "shit"? Shit has no evil intentions. It's not even conscious. It makes a nasty sandwich filling, but only the eater is laid low. By contrast, eating Satan would destroy him. If Satan were trapped between 2 slices of bread — confined to a sandwich — anyone whoever ate that sandwich would bestow great benefits on all mankind.

Mitt Romney opposes the debt-ceiling deal.

He said:

While I appreciate the extraordinarily difficult situation President Obama’s lack of leadership has placed Republican Members of Congress in, I personally cannot support this deal....

As president, my plan would have produced a budget that was cut, capped and balanced — not one that opens the door to higher taxes and puts defense cuts on the table... President Obama’s leadership failure has pushed the economy to the brink at the eleventh hour and 59th minute.

President Obama’s lack of leadership... President Obama’s leadership failure... that's the meme.

The news media declare a big victory for conservatives... but why? I'm skeptical!

Wall Street Journal: "A Tea Party Triumph: The debt deal is a rare bipartisan victory for the forces of smaller government."

New York Times: "To Escape Chaos, a Terrible Deal" ("a nearly complete capitulation to the hostage-taking demands of Republican extremists").

Washington Post (Greg Sargent): "GOP on verge of huge, unprecedented political victory."

Since the vote has not occurred, I have the uneasy feeling that I'm hearing sales pressure. What a fabulous deal for you! Sign here!

That's not to say lying and spinning become a thing of the past after the deal is closed. It just changes. Before, the effort is to get people to sign on. Those who most want the deal have a motivation to act like it's a big victory for whoever is most resistant — in this case, the Tea Party. Afterwards, everyone tries to find a way to gain — either by claiming they really extracted a lot out of the other side and/or by blaming anything that seems bad now on the terrible concessions their stupid/evil opponents insisted on.

This morning, reading these editorials, I suspect that the mainstream media think the Tea Party members of Congress are crazy — they're out there on the ledge. The idea is to talk them in.

"There is caution on Capitol Hill about a tentative deal being reached."

"As the mantra here goes, 'nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to.'"

Why should Obama think in terms of what the Supreme Court might say about his power to single-handedly raise the debt ceiling?

Jeffrey Rosen wonders, noting that the Supreme Court would probably not hear the case.

And even if the justices did agree to hear it, the conservative justices would be torn between their dislike of Obama and their commitment to expanding executive power at all costs. If all the justices are true to their constitutional philosophies, the Court would rule for Obama by a lopsided margin.

In fact, it makes plenty of sense for Obama to refer to what the Court would say even if he doesn't believe the question will end up in court. Why shouldn't he act deferential to judicial interpretation when it's not obstructing anything he presently wants to do? It's exactly the right time to strike that pose if he thinks it's flattering.

Anyway, Obama left himself plenty of room to shake off the deference if and when he wants. All he said was: "I’ve talked to my lawyers... They are not persuaded that that is a winning argument." Not only could the lawyers later become persuaded, Obama could make his own decision disagreeing with his lawyers, and he could decide to rely on a reading of the Constitution that he believes is correct even if he's not persuaded it's a "winning argument."

Now, is it true that the Supreme Court would say the President can, on his own raise the debt ceiling? The constitutional hook for this power is "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law … shall not be questioned." Rosen says:

All four liberal Justices are committed to a vision of “living constitutionalism” that interprets the historical evidence broadly...

He says a bit more than that, but not much to find 4 votes for presidential power. Only one more needed.

What about the conservative justices? Here the divisions in the conservative ranks might become relevant. There are three distinct strains of legal conservatives on the Court: the tea party conservative, Clarence Thomas, the libertarian conservative, Anthony Kennedy, and the pro-executive power conservatives, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, and Antonin Scalia.

The tea party conservative, eh?

Of these five justices, Thomas is the only one whose judicial philosophy might lead him to side with Congress over Obama. As someone who believes that Congressional power over the purse should be construed strictly, Thomas might conclude that Article I gives Congress, and not the president, the power “to borrow money on the credit of the United States”—a power that it has exercised by establishing a debt ceiling. The debt ceiling doesn’t repudiate the debt or question its validity, Thomas might hold; it simply threatens default by prohibiting the president from assuming extra debt beyond what Congress has authorized. According to this argument, Obama’s unilateral decision to take on additional debt to avoid a government default would not represent debt “authorized by law,” as the Fourteenth Amendment requires, and therefore wouldn’t be justified by the Amendment.

Isn't it funny how this "tea party" philosophy just sounds like a fair reading of the text? But only Clarence Thomas is crackpot enough to do that! I added the boldface to highlight what to me seems like the obvious interpretation: No one is talking about questioning the validity of the debt! When you fail to pay debts, you're not claiming they aren't valid. Why wouldn't all the Justices say that? Why would that inapt clause take precedence over the specific and clear clause in Article I, listing among Congress's powers the power "To borrow Money on the credit of the United States"?

Rush Limbaugh: "The Tea Party is putting country before party."

"They can't be bought off with committee assignments or with campaign re-election funds. They can't be bought, and Washington can't understand this. They admit that it's refreshing but it's not as refreshing as compromise would be, speaking of which: Dingy Harry just came out and said that Boehner 3.0 is worse -- is even more unacceptable -- than the original. How is that for the spirit of compromise? We have the President of the United States, the real loser in all of this, the man who is in real trouble -- and we need to start acting that way, and we need to start believing it."

From the opening monologue of yesterday's show.  He was on fire, providing what felt, to me, like the  counterweight to the mainstream media meme (which is: the Tea Party people in Congress are reckless and insane).

"Whom will the public blame for debtageddon?"

Asks Ezra Klein, with prissily correct grammar and a neologism that reminds us of the recent Armageddon that wasn't: Carmageddon.

I'll tell you who I'll blame. I'll blame everyone who thought about the debt-ceiling crisis in that form, which reveals that it's all been jockeying for position in the next election. Interestingly, asking that question now is part of the jockeying.

Klein, ever biased in favor of Democrats, accordingly says:

In a 2010 paper presented at the American Political Science Association’s annual conference, Asger Lau Andersen, David Dreyer Lassen and Lasse Holbøll Westh Nielsen tried to take a systematic look at....

Oh! Good Lord! I'm crushed under the weight of the appearance of scholarship. Those names! Lasse Holbøll Westh Nielsen? A sketch comedy writer could not concoct a better name to exude the aura of pretentious loftiness.

But, hell! It's systematic.  No way it's ammunition for the partisan Klein to use to urge the GOP to... as they say... compromise.

... Voters don’t like budgetary breakdowns. More interesting was how voters apportion blame. “While governors are punished only when part of a unified government, legislatures are (almost) always punished.”
This suggests that when one party controls the government, voters blame them for budgetary breakdowns. But when the two parties split control, the executive is able to float above the squabbling in the legislature, or at least heavily influence the way the public assigns fault. “Governors may be more adept at the blame game that sometimes follows failures to finish a budget on time,” the authors speculate.

Got that?  The executive, Obama, may be able to "float above" the divided legislature, which is "(almost) always punished."

Got that, Republicans? You will be punished if you don't cave compromise.

"The house on Friday passed a debt-limit bill after it was recrafted to appease tea party-allied conservatives..."

"... but President Obama said the plan has 'no chance of becoming law' and instead urged Senate Democrats and Republicans to reach a 'bipartisan compromise.'"

Hey! Why won't he compromise?