In Debt Ceiling Fight, Obama Has the Edge
By MATT BAI
NYT
Last year, President Obama and House Republicans managed to reach a last-minute accord on preserving the Bush tax cuts, and then in April they just barely averted a government shutdown. But now, in this debate over the debt ceiling, each side seems ready to make a stand at last and find out whom the voters really trust when it comes to righting the nation’s finances.
The question is who you would rather be if this thing does, in fact, escalate into a full-blown crisis. As things stand today, I’d much rather be in the president’s shoes than in those of his adversaries, and not only because he tends to dress better.
I say this because politicians very often get themselves into trouble when they subscribe to what you might call the transference theory of political popularity. This is the theory that suggests that the enemy of the person voters don’t trust is someone they will inherently trust more. Or to put it another way: if you’ve lost faith in that guy over there, and I walk up and kick him in the teeth, then your faith will be somehow transferred to me.
This is the political theory under which George W. Bush’s advisers were operating when they predicted spontaneous outpourings of support from Iraqis once American troops toppled Saddam Hussein. Anyone who’d spent a little time in Iraq should have known that while most Iraqis were going to be glad to be rid of Saddam, that didn’t mean they were ready to embrace his deposer, either.
(More here.)
NYT
Last year, President Obama and House Republicans managed to reach a last-minute accord on preserving the Bush tax cuts, and then in April they just barely averted a government shutdown. But now, in this debate over the debt ceiling, each side seems ready to make a stand at last and find out whom the voters really trust when it comes to righting the nation’s finances.
The question is who you would rather be if this thing does, in fact, escalate into a full-blown crisis. As things stand today, I’d much rather be in the president’s shoes than in those of his adversaries, and not only because he tends to dress better.
I say this because politicians very often get themselves into trouble when they subscribe to what you might call the transference theory of political popularity. This is the theory that suggests that the enemy of the person voters don’t trust is someone they will inherently trust more. Or to put it another way: if you’ve lost faith in that guy over there, and I walk up and kick him in the teeth, then your faith will be somehow transferred to me.
This is the political theory under which George W. Bush’s advisers were operating when they predicted spontaneous outpourings of support from Iraqis once American troops toppled Saddam Hussein. Anyone who’d spent a little time in Iraq should have known that while most Iraqis were going to be glad to be rid of Saddam, that didn’t mean they were ready to embrace his deposer, either.
(More here.)
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