The supercommittee’s impending failure is a golden opportunity for Obama to reposition himself for the 2012 campaign.
For the past three years, the sharpest criticisms of Obama’s presidency have focused on his apparently overly optimistic commitment to bipartisan cooperation. The narrative of “Obama as chump” snowballed as he preemptively eliminating a public option from the health-care negotiations, and then failed to leverage the pressure to guarantee the Bush tax cuts’ expiration with the debt ceiling debate. Psychologist Justin Frank just armchair-diagnosed his “obsessive bipartisan disorder,” wherein Republican cooperation is, time and again, the football to Obama’s Charlie Brown. Obama’s got bipartisan fever, many concluded, and the only prescription is more cowbell. For a wakeup call.
But the fever appears to be breaking. After rejecting the Republican proposal, which involved a token $3 B revenue increase from closing a tax loophole for corporate jets and $640 B of cuts to domestic service agencies in lieu of the major cuts to defense spending, Super Committee co-chair, Senator Patty Murray, set up a strong ideological narrative: “The divide is right now is on taxes, whether or not the wealthiest Americans should share in the sacrifice.” Obama continued to emphasize that contrast, with refreshingly hard truths from a spokesman who so often soft-pedals fundamental conflicts: “The equation, no matter how you do it, is going to be the same…prudent cuts have to be matched up with revenue.”
Republicans are backed into a hole based on their rigid resistance to raising any taxes. Twenty years of absolute anti-tax lobbying have left them with an unpalatable choice: betray their commitment to national security, with cuts mandated by sequestration, or their commitment to ever-lower taxes. Where the President might have once provided cover for stark philosophical differences in the name of bipartisanship, Obama is now happy to give Republicans enough Grover Norquist-issued rope to hang themselves with.
This can only help embolden Obama to make a case for himself, one based not on compromise and partnership but on representing the true values and interests of the American people. Already, Obama has proposed a jobs plan and a strategy for long-term debt reduction, both of which got shot down by a party that believes wealth concentration is good for everyone. The debate over who bears responsibility for our country’s costs (the 1% or the 99%) can only result favorably for Democrats, provided they present that ever-elusive case for redistribution of wealth, increased revenue from taxes, and investment in job creation, education, and social safety nets. An opportunity to doubling down on progressive principles is exactly the momentum Obama needs as he heads into a competitive race.
The best case scenario is for the Super Committee’s failure to energize Obama as a candidate, one who realizes that pragmatism and cooperation have to be rooted in principles, not in spite of them.
