Will he be willing to compromise?

Yesterday President Barack Obama addressed the nation at a news conference. He said some good things about how he has heard the message of Tuesday's election and how he wants to work with the Republican leaders in Congress to get things done. If he acts as he spoke, good. I wonder, though, whether he will really be able to work with Congressional Republicans. Certainly, he has not shown any willingness to address Republican concerns in the past six years.

One thing that I think was apparent is that Pres. Obama is more willing to work with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell — he even referred to sitting down for a drink of Kentucky bourbon with him — than with Speaker of the House John Boehner. He never issued a word of praise for Boehner, and only referred to him in conjunction with McConnell as leaders of the Congress. It has become clear over the years that both Obama and Boehner dislike each other immensely, and McConnell will have the major role of finding something they all can agree on.

But again, the question is how much common ground can they find. The President already ruled out some of the changes to Obamacare that the GOP obviously wants. How much more has he ruled out? We can only wait and see.

Impeachment? Hardly an option

Some people have been talking about impeaching Pres. Obama. But this is totally impractical. And it's not for the reasons that such as Charles Hurt of The Washington Times give. Yes, impeaching Obama is really a scheme that can't be done. And Speaker John Boehner is right to dismiss it out of hand, even if such as Sarah Palin have called for it. (In fact, most of the impeachment talk comes from Democrats these days — trying to use this as a way of rallying their base!) But Hurt's reason — that the GOP is very bad at getting its ideas accepted by the American public — is not the real reason.

The real reason is that our Constitution makes it impossible to impeach a president and win, unless you can get substantially unanimous agreement. To get two thirds of the Senate to agree to convict a president like Obama, who still retains a lot of popularity, is an impossible task. The Senate would not remove Bill Clinton, who lied before a grand jury, and it is very clear that no Democratic Senator (and right now they are a majority, and even the most optimistic polls for the GOP do not expect the Democratic numbers after November's election to be reduced below the middle forties, certainly not below 33, which would be necessary to get an impeachment through!) will vote to convict Pres. Obama.

So even if the House voted to impeach, all that would do is get some Obama supporters to be angry. It would not actually remove the President. So what good would that do?

Sarah Palin calls for impeachment

Former Governor Sarah Palin has called for the impeachment of President Barack Obama. It's a crazy call. Yes, if you asked me whether Pres. Obama has done things worthy of impeachment, I would have to say “yes.” But any impeachment can only remove a President if it can get 67 votes in the Senate. And in a Democratic Senate, with only 45 Republicans, does anyone think 22 Democrats will vote to remove Pres. Obama? It just won't happen. The only way to proceed is through the courts, getting Obama's violations of the Constitution and laws reversed by the judicial system, and possibly, with actions like the Boehner lawsuit, invalidating other unconstiutional acts. And of course refusing to pass any legislation that Obama proposes unless it makes some concessions to the views of others than extreme liberals, so nothing gets done to further destroy our economy in the 2½ years remaining of the Obama presidency, until January, 2017, when (hopefully) Chris Christie or another Republican moves into the White House.

Boehner's lawsuit

It is interesting to see that Democrats are going out of their way to paint Speaker John Boehner's lawsuit against President Obama as frivolous and even “nutty.” They point to the large number of executive orders that were issued by Republican presidents; Paul Begala, who used the “nutty” term, even points to Speaker Boehner's acquiescence in President George W. Bush's executive orders and holds them out as evidence that Boehner is a hypocrite, objecting to executive orders only if a Democratic president issues them.

But there are executive orders and executive orders. The point is that nobody, not even John Boehner, is challenging a President's right to issue executive orders. If a President issues an order that is in accordance with the President's Constitutional powers and Congress-passed legislation, this is just fine. It is when he issues executive orders which contravene legislation which the Congress has passed and a President has signed into law, then he has violated his Constitutional duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” (Art. II, Sec. 3, clause 5 of the Constitution)

Some might argue that the House of Representatives should instead resort to the impeachmment power which the Constitution grants to the House. The problem is that all of us know that no Democrat, and there are 55 of them, in the Senate will vote for conviction. Sixty-seven Senatorial votes are needed, and even if all Republicans vote to convict, there are only forty-five. We have seen, in the case of Bill Clinton, that the impeachment power is quite toothless. Politics trumps the Constitution in the impeachment proceedings. Bill Clinton lied before a Grand Jury, and could not be convicted. So John Boehner needs to go a different route. But how the courts will rule is uncertain. This technique has not, to my knowledge, been tried before. And even if a court finds for Boehner, will President Obama defy it? I suspect he will. But all we can do is wait and see how this plays out.

Telling Boehner to pass laws

Yet another person has written a post saying: “Dear Speaker Boehner: Do your job instead.” That was the actual title of a post by Sally Kohn of CNN. Of course, she is described as a “progressive activist, columnist and television commentator.” And so as far as she is concerned, President Obama is just doing his job. She does not see him as violating law after law passed by Congress and the Constitution he was sworn to “preserve, protect, and defend.” She has no problem with his executive orders, which she points out were fewer in number than those of “Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and President George W. Bush.” What she does not point out was that their executive orders were in conformity with law and the Constitution. They never issued orders directing that laws duly passed by Congress — such as our immigration laws and even the “Obamacare” law that he considers his pride and joy — not be fully enforced.

And what is most amazing is her directive to John Boehner to “pass laws to help rather than jeering from the sidelines and rooting for America to fail so you can blame it on President Obama.” John Boehner would like to “pass laws to help,” but he knows that anything his House passes will be shot down by the Senate.

Let us give an example. Kohn refers to a jobs bill that did pass the House. She of course derides it by saying,

You assert that you have passed jobs bills that President Obama and the Democratic Senate are ignoring, but frankly the word “jobs” as you use it there is questionable. Your “jobs” bills include legislation to repeal Obamacare, through which 20 million Americans now have health insurance, cut food stamps for poor Americans and reduce government regulations on fracking.

Meanwhile, President Obama proposed an actual jobs bill that would have created construction jobs to modernize our deteriorating roads and airports, provided tax credits for employers that hired returning veterans, extended unemployment benefits, which also spurs spending, and cut payroll taxes for 98% of American businesses. But that jobs bill was killed by Republican opposition in Congress.

Which approach would have actually created jobs? Clearly, Kohn thinks the second. But repealing Obamacare, in fact, would create millions of jobs, simply because employers are not now hiring people due to the onerous burden that Obamacare places on them. Reducing government regulations of fracking would create jobs in the petroleum industry. And on the other hand, extending unemployment benefits encourages people who might look for work not to. Boehner's bill would have created jobs; Obama's would not. All I can say is, Sally Kohn, you don't know what you're talking about.

Kohn wants Boehner to pass bills, but not bills that would actually help the country; she wants Boehner to pass bills like Obamacare — which she has the gall to describe as a good thing! — to hasten the president's destruction of our economy. But then, what can you expect of a “progressive activist, columnist and television commentator”?

Is this the stupidest editorial running?

A newspaper in San Antonio, Texas, the Express-News, just ran an editorial stating:

House Speaker John Boehner is reportedly preparing legislation allowing the House to sue the president over his use of executive actions.

The president, his supporters say, has used these only because Congress has failed to act on, well, just about anything of substance. There is some evidence that the real name of the game is denying the president any victory. Pure political brinkmanship, in other words.

Separation of powers is a weighty topic that should be considered when events warrant — on NSA spying, for instance, or going to war without explicit congressional approval. We have doubts that the president's executive actions in question rise to that level.

Boehner is likely pursuing this legislation with some confidence, given the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling last week that slapped the president down for use of recess appointments.

Presidents from both parties have done recess appointments. Legislators have tried to prevent these by conducting pro-forma sessions in which essentially no business is conducted.

A unanimous high court said these pro-forma sessions can't be considered recesses and that the president acted unconstitutionally. It ignored the abuse of power the pro-forma sessions represent.

Abuse of power? Apparently the Express-News believes that a president should have untrammelled right to do anything he wants, and that it is an abuse of power for the Senate to use its Constitutional power to take an equal part in the appointments process; the constitutional phrase is “advice and consent.”

What should tie all these issues together for the public is whether the president, in the face of congressional inaction, has the authority to act on his own on various issues. On nominations, on immigration and on EPA regulations, for instance.

But there's a cure that Boehner avoids. Congress could govern.

Unilaterally? The Express-News does not seem to understand that the House of Representatives and Senate are controlled by opposite parties, that anything the House passes will be turned down by a Democratic Senate, and that even if the GOP retakes the Senate in this November's elections, President Obama still has a veto power.

This lawsuit would attempt in the courts what the parties should settle at the ballot box — by winning the Senate and the White House, for instance — or by engaging in the give-and-take that real governing demands.

Harry Reid has shown that he is unwilling to “engag[e] in the give-and-take that real governing demands.” The House has passed legislation to mitigate the disaster that is Obamacare. Sen. Reid will not let it come up for a vote where it could be amended to produce some sort of compromise.

There are constitutional limits to both executive and legislative authority. But at its core, the argument for the public is really whether separation of powers means that one branch gets to infect another with its purposeful, partisan inaction.

The question prompts another: Where does the line start to sue Congress for its refusal to govern?

It is not that Congress refuses to govern. It is that anything one house of Congress might pass will be killed by the other. And it is also that we have a President who cannot see the error of his ways, and therefore would veto any legislation that might actually improve things.

Who won? Who lost?

I am amazed when I look at the things being written about the recent shenanigans over the budget. On the one hand, there are people like the editors of The Nation, who wrote an editorial dated October 16, 2013, entitled “Even When the GOP Loses, It Wins,” whose thesis is that it was in fact a Republican victory because:

The GOP now goes into budget talks with sequestration as the new baseline, primed to demand longer-term cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. And they still hold the gun of a US default to the nation’s head in the next debt ceiling showdown.

But on the other hand, Obamacare is still in place, and we read such things as Timothy Noah's posting on MSNBC's site:

[W]hat the GOP’s right flank is experiencing right now, in government and the court of political opinion, is failure.

Both these posts come from the political Left, so it is not a case of the Left seeing it as a Right win because they had to give up some and the Right seeing a mirror image of this. It is clear that John Boehner feels that he lost:

“We fought the good fight. We just didn't win,” Boehner told Cincinnati radio station WLW on Wednesday after the Senate stepped in to effectively end the legislative impasse.…“Every time I've gotten into a discussion with the President, the Vice President, the Democrats here in Washington, and talk about entitlement changes, trying to make these programs sustainable, all they want to do is raise taxes. Well we can't do that,” Boehner said.

“If they're going to hold onto their position that we're always going to raise taxes, then we're not going to come to an agreement.”

As I said in a previous post, they just kicked the can down the road. Who will come out ahead in the long run, I just don't know.

What a crock!

Norman Ornstein wrote an article, dated July 24, on the National Journal site entitled “The Unprecedented — and Contemptible — Attempts to Sabotage Obamacare” The main burden of the article is in the following excerpt:

When a law is enacted, representatives who opposed it have some choices (which are not mutually exclusive). They can try to repeal it, which is perfectly acceptable—unless it becomes an effort at grandstanding so overdone that it detracts from other basic responsibilities of governing. They can try to amend it to make it work better—not just perfectly acceptable but desirable, if the goal is to improve a cumbersome law to work better for the betterment of the society and its people. They can strive to make sure that the law does the most for Americans it is intended to serve, including their own constituents, while doing the least damage to the society and the economy. Or they can step aside and leave the burden of implementation to those who supported the law and got it enacted in the first place.

But to do everything possible to undercut and destroy its implementation—which in this case means finding ways to deny coverage to many who lack any health insurance; to keep millions who might be able to get better and cheaper coverage in the dark about their new options; to create disruption for the health providers who are trying to implement the law, including insurers, hospitals, and physicians; to threaten the even greater disruption via a government shutdown or breach of the debt limit in order to blackmail the president into abandoning the law; and to hope to benefit politically from all the resulting turmoil—is simply unacceptable, even contemptible. One might expect this kind of behavior from a few grenade-throwing firebrands. That the effort is spearheaded by the Republican leaders of the House and Senate—even if Speaker John Boehner is motivated by fear of his caucus, and McConnell and Cornyn by fear of Kentucky and Texas Republican activists—takes one's breath away.

What he seems to ignore is the fact that this law — enacted after the people of such a blue state as Massachusetts chose Scott Brown to the Senate primarily to prevent Obamacare from becoming law, by using a parliamentary maneuver to bypass the Senate's rules — is, in the mind of the Republicans who are trying to derail it, a terrible law that will ruin the economy (and, in fact, has already hurt it seriously). Why should anyone do otherwise than to sabotage it, given a President and Senate which will resist repeal? Suppose the shoe were on the other foot, Dr. Ornstein: there were a law on the books that you felt was seriously going to hurt the economy, and there was no way to patch it to eliminate its flaws. Would you simply acquiesce? These Republicans were elected for a reason, and that reason was that the voters trusted them to do right by the country. And, in their opinion — and that of the majority of the country, according to polls — the bill hurts the country, and it should be repealed, not strengthened.

If President Obama, or the Democrats in the Senate, had been willing to allow the repeal of Obamacare, and the construction of a new act, the Republicans would be remiss if they did not go along. But this is not the case, and sabotaging this act is the only course possible.

Another GOP senator endorses gay marriage

A while ago, Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio endorsed gay marriage, becoming the first sitting GOP senator to do so. He was just joined by Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois. This is an important development.

Until Portman, it seemed as though the Democrats had the monopoly on this side of the issue. And it took his son's coming out to convince Portman. Now with Kirk as the second one, the GOP is moving in the direction it ought to: getting rid of the dominance by “social conservatives” — a code word for “religious bigots trying to impose their views on others.” We even have the spectacle of Speaker of the House John Boehner hiring an attorney to defend DOMA before the Supreme Court, because the Obama Administration accepts its unconstitutionality!

The Republican Party is generally the party in favor of freedom of the individual. But because of the “social conservatives'” power, it has taken the wrong stance on issues like abortion, gay rights, and such. That two sitting GOP senators have decided to push against the “social conservatives” can only be praised. Hopefully, they will be joined by more. The GOP needs to stand up to the “social conservatives.”

The worm has turned

Back at the end of last year, the Republicans found themselves in a bad spot. If they did nothing, the Bush tax cuts would all expire Jan. 1. Even President Obama wanted to preserve many of them, so there was bipartisan agreement that doing nothing was unacceptable. And thus, John Boehner and the House Republican caucus ended up surrendering too much to President Obama. There was no better choice.

Now, on the other hand, it is the President who is in the same pickle that the Republicans were in back then. If nobody does anything, the sequester kicks in — the spending cuts go beyond what the GOP wants, but certainly Obama gets none of the tax increases he wants. So the only compromise possible is for the President to give up on some of the tax increases. We are seeing his allies — Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the House Democrats — making wild statements to try to curry favor with the American people. But they cannot win — and President Obama knows it. Finally, he is talking with the GOP leaders in Congress — something he refused to do last December. My, how the worm has turned!

Perhaps a compromise is possible

Well, Speaker John Boehner has indicated he is willing to accept a raise in tax rates on people with income over a million dollars. And President Barack Obama has raised his $250,000 figure to $400,000. There is still a gap there, and other aspects that are also going to be problems, but each side has given a little.

Perhaps by Dec. 31, a compromise will be achieved. I hope so. There is still a week and a half to go.

More on the "fiscal cliff" controversy

I recently had an exchange of e-mails with my brother, who is politically somewhat more conservative than myself, though we are closer to each other in our views than either of us is to those our parents held. Some interesting points were made, which I will make public here. First, after I referred him to my post:

Actually, I read similar ideas to yours recently, soak the really, really rich, but leave the really rich alone. Well said on neither side being willing to compromise, when you wrote it, but there is breaking news. Joe Biden, the Clown Prince of Buffoonery, was quoted yesterday as saying that it doesn't have to be exactly 37 percent for the top bracket, it could be less, it's just the principle that the rich have to pay more.

To which my response was:

I suspect that some compromise like this will be attained in the end. What we really don't know is what is going on behind closed doors in secret negotiations, where Boehner's lieutenants and Obama's can make deals that neither can endorse in public because of the socialistic elements in the Administration and the TEA Party contingent within the House GOP.

He continued:

The Republicans were willing to compromise by expanding revenue, 800 billion worth, but that wasn't enough for the Dems, and is too much for the TEA Party.

What we have here are two opposed sides ON PRINCIPLE. (Old Yiddish saying: "Corrupt officials can be bribed into doing the right thing, but men of principle are much more expensive.")

To the Socialists, the high-earners are anathema. They contradict the very foundation of Marxism: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. They get paid more than (the Marxists think that) they need.

To the Republicans, high-earners provide the life-blood and impetus of life's flows, without their spark of energy, the society would fail and wither. Everyone else (and that includes you and me) are hangers on, who should just shut up and follow, unless we want to become entrepreneurs and get some skin in the game. This is best represented by the works of Ayn Rand.

I had to agree with his comment that “[w]hat we have here are two opposed sides ON PRINCIPLE.” But my main point is that:

All that you say is true. BUT, sometimes it is necessary to make some concessions even from one's principles. The socialistic Democrats control the White House and (except for the filibuster rule) the Senate. The Republicans control the House. Nothing can be done at all unless all three can find agreement — the Madisonian principle enshrined in the Constitution. If neither one gives an inch, a result occurs that neither side wants to happen — it's like Prisoner's Dilemma: you have to make what seems to be the worse choice, or the net result is the worst possible alternative.

I'm willing to say as much publicly, and so this post.

When will Barack Obama learn what "compromise" means?

For a brief moment, it looked as though President Barack Obama might have achieved a compromise with Speaker of the House John Boehner and the Republicans. He had hinted that he might approve a plan that would increase revenues from the well-to-do, without necessarily raising tax rates. But it is now clear that this will not be. He now says that he has a mandate from this election to raise those rates. And of course this means no compromise is in the works.

It looks as though the “fiscal cliff” is in the offing. Obama has no concept of what a compromise is. To him it means he calls the shots, and everyone else accepts his ideas, no matter how repugnant they may be.

It's going to be a long two years (or four, depending on the 2014 elections).

The next two years (at least)

For the next two years, I see the most gridlocked government one could imagine in Washington. A Barack Obama just given four more years in the White House will submit bill after bill of legislation inspired by Karl Marx, and while Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi will dutifully attempt to get the bills through the House of Representatives, she will not have the votes. In most cases, they will receive a total of zero votes from the GOP side, since Obama has no intention of compromising in a meaningful way. His idea of a compromise, as shown in the last four years, is "you adopt my program." Since the Republicans will still control the House, none of Obama's bills will pass, but the bills the House passes, if they get through the Senate at all, will be vetoed by President Obama. And since the Republicans do not have a 2/3 majority in the House, and do not even control the Senate, there will not be enough votes to override a veto. The only legislation that will go through will be relatively uncontroversial stuff like naming a post officde after a deceased congressman.

If any new developments occur at all, they will come out of the Supreme Court. It will rule on some gay rights cases, and very likely on other cases that nobody can foresee at present. It may even kill some parts of Obamacare, though the program itself has been ruled constitutional. But the future of the Court's decisions will also be affected by Court retirements. And President Obama may be able to put another Elena Kagan on the Court, since the Senate will be Democratic and the House has no role in ratifying appointments.

It is going to be two more years of skirmishing between a far-left President Obama and a Tea Party-influenced GOP controlled House of Representatives. And our system has survived (see the last two years of Harry Truman's first term). So it will survive again. But I can't expect anything great to come out of the next two years.

Yeah, blame the Republicans for everything!

There is a blog supported by MSNBC called “The Maddow Blog,”, and, as one might expect of anything named for Rachel Maddow, it spouts a hard-left propaganda line. On Friday, a post appeared on this blog by Steve Benen, which has the audacity to blame the Republicans in the House of Representatives for the poor employment figures that were released that morning.

You see, a year ago (specifically, a year ago yesterday) President Obama proposed a piece of legislation he called the American Jobs Act, supposed to create 2 million jobs. And the Republicans in the House turned it down.

So much is pathologically wrong with Mr. Benen's analysis. First of all, it took him until 2011 to put forth a jobs proposal. In January 2009, he took office. From the beginning of 2009 till the beginning of 2011, he had a Congress solidly controlled by Democrats. If he had put his “American Jobs Act” before that Congress, there was no way the Republicans could have prevented its passage. But of course, in that time he was otherwise occupied. He had to push “Obamacare” through. For this he needed every single Democrat in the Senate, and when Massachusetts voters told the world, by electing Scott Brown to the Senate, that this “Obamacare” monstrosity was not what they wanted — Massachusetts, the most Democratic state in the country! — they had to use parliamentary trickery to get it through. No time for jobs then.

Secondly, most of the time, a President with a Congress that has at least one house controlled by the opposite party will find a way to compromise and propose legislation that at least some members of both parties can accept. When the voters elected a Republican House in 2010, if Obama were like most past Presidents faced with that sort of opposition, he should have done that. But Barack Obama refuses to consider any ideas that the Republicans — or even the less radical among the Democrats! — could have signed on to. So of course, as he pushed “Obamacare” through the Congress, getting not a single Republican vote in the Senate and only one in the House, he tried to propose a “jobs” bill with no Republicans allowed any input. Could the Republicans be legitimately expected to merely roll over and play dead?

Of course, Mr. Benen claims that “Obama sought to shift the national conversation away from austerity and towards job creation, and presented a sensible plan, filled with ideas that have traditionally [emphasis mine] enjoyed bipartisan support.” But obviously, he never asked Speaker Boehner whether those ideas enjoyed bipartisan support in 2011. (Of course, this was the same President Obama who, in 2010, when he needed to call Speaker Boehner to congratulate him after the election, didn't even have his number and needed to ask someone else to dig it up! So much for inter-party consultation!) And even if some of those ideas enjoyed bipartisan support, others were probably poisonous.

When Mitt Romney was Governor of Massachusetts, he faced a legislature that had both houses controlled by the Democrats — by 85%-15% margins — so he didn't even have a veto threat! Yet he was able to get legislation through that legislature. Barack Obama has no idea what it takes to work with a Congress that he does not totally control. All he can do is lay blame — on his predecessor, on the members of the opposite party whose constituents elected them to express their views, not his, and on anyone else he can. He refuses to accept responsibility for the flawed performance of this country's economy — or anything else.

Bob Woodward's new book points out how incompetent President Obama is!

According to Bob Woodward's book, “The Price of Politics,” (reported by ABC News) there was almost an agreement between President Barack Obama and Speaker of the House John Boehner that would have established the kind of budget compromise that some moderate blogs have advocated: a mixture of spending cuts and revenue enhancements.

The book … shows how close the president and the House speaker were to defying Washington odds and establishing a spending framework that included both new revenues and major changes to long-sacred entitlement programs.

But at a critical juncture, with an agreement tantalizingly close, Obama pressed Boehner for additional taxes as part of a final deal — a miscalculation, in retrospect, given how far the House speaker felt he'd already gone.

President Obama, obviously, had no impression how much pressure Speaker Boehner was under from his own conference — or at least from the “Tea Party” wing — and ended up exerting more pressure than the Speaker could take. He tried to call the Speaker, but Boehner took his time replying.

When Boehner finally did call back, he jettisoned the entire deal. Obama lost his famous cool, according to Woodward, with a “flash of pure fury” coming from the president; one staffer in the room said Obama gripped the phone so tightly he thought he would break it.

“He was spewing coals,” Boehner told Woodward, in what is described as a borderline “presidential tirade.”

“He was pissed…. He wasn't going to get a damn dime more out of me. He knew how far out on a limb I was. But he was hot. It was clear to me that coming to an agreement with him was not going to happen, and that I had to go to Plan B.”

But this may be a result of Obama's unwillingness to even contemplate the possibility that people might think differently from him. The ABC News article notes:

The failure of Obama to connect with Boehner was vaguely reminiscent of another phone call late in the evening of Election Day 2010, after it became clear that the Republicans would take control of the House, making Boehner Speaker of the House.

Nobody in the Obama orbit could even find the soon-to-be-speaker's phone number, Woodward reports. A Democratic Party aide finally secured it through a friend so the president could offer congratulations.

The problem was that Obama was learning on the job how to be President — the problem with having a President with so little experience. Obama simply has not got the kind of understanding of how Washington works to make compromises:

Obama found that he had little history with members of Congress to draw on. His administration's early decision to forego bipartisanship for the sake of speed around the stimulus bill was encapsulated by his then-chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel: “We have the votes. F--- 'em,” he's quoted in the book as saying.

The article continues:

Obama's relationship with Democrats wasn't always much better. Woodward recounts an episode early in his presidency when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid were hammering out final details of the stimulus bill.

Obama phoned in to deliver a “high-minded message,” he writes. Obama went on so long that Pelosi “reached over and pressed the mute button on her phone,” so they could continue to work without the president hearing that they weren't paying attention.

As debt negotiations progressed, Democrats complained of being out of the loop, not knowing where the White House stood on major points. Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, is described as having a “growing feeling of incredulity” as negotiations meandered.

“The administration didn't seem to have a strategy. It was unbelievable. There didn't seem to be any core principles,” Woodward writes in describing Van Hollen's thinking.

Now, Chris Van Hollen (who just happens to be my Congressman) is hardly someone I agree with on many things. But it's clear (although he'd be unlikely to say so now, in this election year, of course) that he thought that Barack Obama was simply clueless. And this passage in the report casts further aspersions on Obama's competence:

Woodward portrays a president who remained a supreme believer in his own powers of persuasion, even as he faltered in efforts to coax congressional leaders in both parties toward compromise. Boehner told Woodward that at one point, when Boehner voiced concern about passing the deal they were working out, the president reached out and touched his forearm.

“John, I've got great confidence in my ability to sway the American people,” Boehner quotes the president as having told him.

But after the breakthrough agreement fell apart, Boehner's “Plan B” would ultimately exclude the president from most of the key negotiations. The president was “voted off the island,” in Woodward's phrase, even by members of his own party, as congressional leaders patched together an eleventh hour framework to avoid default.

It is just not going to happen!

Although the post was made ten days ago, I just read it today. Michael Medved wrote a posting on The Daily Beast blog, entitled “Obama Should Name Unity Government to Tackle Financial Crisis.” Really, what he advocates is that President Obama should replace Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner by someone who might be respected by the Republicans, someone like Steve Forbes or former New Hampshire senator Judd Gregg (who was actually offered a Cabinet post by Obama, but at the far less prestigious Commerce Department). Well, Mr. Medved might be right in that such appointment would signify that President Obama would be willing to abandon hyper-partisanship in favor of problem solving. But the reason that won't happen is that this is not true: President Obama is not at all willing to abandon hyper-partisanship. It is his stock in trade. It would be the equivalent of Nancy Pelosi, two years ago, offering to share some of the Speaker's prerogatives with John Boehner. It has about as much likelihood as that of Obama resigning as President, or declining to be nominated in favor of Hillary Clinton, even though I've actually seen suggestions that he do the latter.

Barack Obama is the most egotistical President we have had in my lifetime, probably the most egotistical President we have ever had. He simply believes he is certain to find, on his own, the solution to all our money problems, and he is not about to show a trace of compromise here. Michael Medved obviously does not understand what makes Barack Obama tick, if he makes a proposal like the one he made.

Is Pres. Obama looking for a bill? Or a campaign issue?

“Politics is the art of the possible.” So said Otto von Bismarck over a century ago. And to a great extent, this is true. But it looks as though President Barack Obama doesn't believe so.

He is still insisting that a bill to improve our economic situation must raise taxes, though he has been told by Speaker of the House John Boehner that such a bill cannot pass the House of Representatives. In fact, even the Democrats in the Senate are not united behind it, so the Senate, no less than the House, will reject his plan.

The only possible motive for Obama's making this proposal is that he's not really looking to get a bill through the Congress that he can sign, but instead he is hoping that he can harness class warfare to ensure his re-election, since there are more poor voters than rich. But hopefully, even those who are not rich will realize that those “rich people”that Obama wants to strangle financially are the people who create the jobs we need. Obama wants to kill the golden goose. And he's encouraged by such as Warren Buffett, who have so much money that they can easily spare the tax money Obama would take from them. But a lot of people are not in Warren Buffett's class, and will not be so eager to support Obama's programs with their money.

President Obama's bill is dead on arrival at the House, and I'm sure he knows it. So unless he's only building up a campaign issue, what is the sense of proposing such a bill?

The debt ceiling vote -- as I expected

Yesterday — after 7 pm — the House of Representatives voted to extend the debt ceiling. A moment of drama was added by having Rep. Gabrielle Giffords return to the House for the first time since she was shot last January.

It will still need to pass the Senate, which is scheduled to vote on it today — the last possible day before a threatened default. I assume it will pass.

As I said in an earlier post, the politicians involved were playing "chicken" to win political points. President Obama got the one thing he desperately wanted — an extension past the 2012 election, so the election would not be fought while the debt ceiling debate went on. The Republicans got one thing they wanted — at least short-term, no new tax increases. The Tea Party got only some of the spending cuts they wanted — but this was a bit of a victory for them, since the Democrats wanted, at first, not to make any cuts, and to do it all by tax increases.

It's a compromise. Everyone got something and gave up something. But as a Republican I have to say that the Democrats, controlling the Senate and White House, had so much in their favor, and yet gave up so much in the end. I have to think that the Republican Congressional leaders worked beyond the call of duty to make this a bill with more Republican input than you might expect with the Democrats controlling so much of the machinery.

Kudos to Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, and anyone else I forgot in the Republican Congressional leadership.

President Obama still doesn't get it!

President Barack Obama is quoted as having said, after another breakdown in the talks over the debt, "Can they say yes to anything?"

It is clear that he still hasn't gotten it. No, they aren't going to say yes to tax increases, particularly in the midst of a recession. And if you keep insisting on raising taxes, you will not get an agreement. The reason that John Boehner, not Nancy Pelosi, is Speaker of the House, is that the American people, last November, spoke out. And they embraced the idea that the way to fix this economy is not "tax and spend," but "give the people their own money, to spend."