Obama’s shutdown critics look like morons after budget deal

[DonViejo]

Guess what, tired Beltway pundits: Obama's successful leadership from October brought an end to GOP hostage-taking

BRIAN BEUTLER

Back in August and September, two opposing analytical frameworks dominated the media’s coverage of the government shutdown and debt limit hostage crises.

On one side of that divide, liberals argued that President Obama’s refusal to negotiate with Republicans wasn’t just appropriate, but necessary to preserve an appropriate balance of power between the executive and the legislature — the only way to restore the basic give and take of governing.

On the other side, most conservatives, and a few allies in the mainstream media, argued that Obama needed to get his hands dirty and negotiate a settlement of both issues, even if it meant paying a modest ransom to the GOP. That his refusal to be extorted, to haggle over the terms of his own surrender — to say nothing of his prior inability to strike a grand bargain with the same hostage-taking party — amounted to a failure of leadership. Many said his position was unsustainable.

National Journal’s Ron Fournier argued paradoxically that while Obama couldn’t cave to GOP ransom demands, he also needed to negotiate a ransom. That a more adroit leader would have been able to wring a mutually agreeable budget deal out of uncompromising House Republicans.

Washington Post conservative Jennifer Rubin interpreted Obama’s refusal to negotiate not as an attempt to end the cycle of brinkmanship Republicans had initiated two years earlier, and return to reciprocity in divided government, but as a not-very-leaderly political scheme meant to destroy their party.

full article
http://www.salon.com/2013/12/12/obamas_shutdown_critics_look_like_morons_after_budget_deal/

[DCBob]

1. This President has an uncanny knack at making his critics look like morons.