The common wisdom on the government shutdown is that the Republicans lost and President Obama won. I don’t disagree with the former. The Republican loss was just about assured when they said their goal was to defund Obamacare. That wasn’t going to happen, so they were going to look like they lost.
But did the Democrats really win? I know the mainstream media said they did, but the media was going to say that almost no matter what. In looking through some old Wall Street Journals, however, I found this article by Gerald Seib on October 8: “Democrats’ Goal: ‘Break the Fever’ Of Constant Crises.”*
“Breaking the fever is code for ending the cycle of recurring, last-minute crises over spending bills and increases in the nation's borrowing limit—the debt ceiling. The White House believes these crises give outsize power to a minority of conservative House Republicans who don't have the strength to push their agenda into law but can, in a crisis, stop the action.
More important, Democrats are convinced they must break the cycle now, or see much of the Obama second-term agenda sink away.
‘The only way for us to go forward is to all make clear that the era of threatening default is over,’ Gene Sperling, head of the White House National Economic Council, said Monday at a breakfast organized by Politico.”
That didn’t happen. The budget was only put off until January 15 and the debt ceiling until February (maybe March). Not only that, but the sequester is still in place, with another installment coming January 1, and taxes did not go up. That sounds more like something Republicans wanted than the Democrats.
As for getting Congress to move on to other things, such as immigration, the farm bill and corporate tax loopholes, like the President mentioned in his post-shutdown press conference, it is hard to see that happening. Certainly, the President didn’t help himself when he trash talked the Republicans in his press conference: “You don’t like a particular policy or a particular president, then argue for your position. Go out there and win an election.” That’s not the way to get the other side to work with you.**
So, the Republicans clearly lost, but it doesn’t look to me
like the President got what he wanted either.
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* This was the title in the print version.
The online title was different, as you can see.
** If the President wants to see how to reconcile with the other side, now that the national parks have re-opened, he might want to go out to Appomattox Court House National Historical Park (it’s only a short detour from Washington), and see how Ulysses S. Grant did it. I also note that all of the Republicans in the House of Representatives are there because they won an election.
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