Bill Clinton: I Would Invoke The 14th Amendment To Raise The Debt Ceiling ‘Without Hesitation’

[man4allcats]

Maybe Obama should listen to The Big Dog:

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/07/19/272524/clinton-14th-debt-ceiling/

[Cool Logic]

1. Clinton is testing the idea to see how it plays...

Obama will monitor the reaction and if it plays well, he might just try it.

[Igel]

2. He's without power.

He can say that he'd let the debt ceiling expire and go play golf in Ireland if he wanted to. He could say that if he were in the White House there'd be a $20 million a day budget for Doritos, or insist on the little green spacemen that live in the heating ducts frizzling his nose hairs twice a day.

Nobody really cares. And he knows it. Big Dog likes to wag his, uh, tail.

In fact, there's no reason to suspect that he's actually sought legal advice about it, that he's looked over his notes on Constitutional law from when he actually studied the law, or that he's thought things through more than he's heard on NPR.

As a respected professor once told me, if you're without power there's no need for you to take responsible positions. You can advocate for the most insane positions you want to because any decision taken isn't yours. Bomb Mecca! Rebuild the WTC out of ice-cream! Change the recipe for Coca-Cola! If they take your advice and all hell breaks loose, your response quite properly is, "Just what the hell did you think you were doing, taking my advice--you fool!"

But the moment you actually bear responsibility you find that your decisions suddenly change: It's your ass on the line, if you make a bad decision you are the one responsible for hurting others. The more responsibility you have, the more people you should realize a wrong decision will hurt. People in positions of great authority who make bold, rash, daring decisions are usually a bit deranged. For the most part either they don't care who they hurt, or they're so caught up in their "tail" wagging that they don't believe they can do wrong, that, yes, they *can* save the world, dammit, just leave them alone to prove how glorious they are. Some do care and aren't deranged, and tend to worry themselves to an early death and second guess their larger decisions. (The lucky ones in all three groups are "great leaders." The rest? If they're on our side we say, "Look! A squirrel!" as we try to get rid of them as quickly as possible and blame somebody else. If they're on the other's side we hope we don't look around for the squirrel so we can embarrass them all to an early death.)