By Dan Kervick
As part of his Tuesday night statement on the fiscal cliff deal he had just concluded with Congress, President Obama boldly affirmed that he would not negotiate over the debt ceiling, implicitly raising the dire specter of government default to defend his position:
Now, one last point I want to make — while I will negotiate over many things, I will not have another debate with this Congress over whether or not they should pay the bills that they’ve already racked up through the laws that they passed. Let me repeat: We can’t not pay bills that we’ve already incurred. If Congress refuses to give the United States government the ability to pay these bills on time, the consequences for the entire global economy would be catastrophic — far worse than the impact of a fiscal cliff.
Now this is the kind of thing that tends to make star-struck Democrats weak in the knees. Partisan Democrats are always extraordinarily impressed by ejaculations of tough talk from President Obama. But they often have difficulty distinguishing the stagy theatrics of tough talk from the drab backstage reality of tough action. And unfortunately, every time Obama succeeds in turning some policy debate into a theatrical tilt with Republican leaders, progressives lose. They lose because Obama’s Democratic supporters will usually follow him almost anywhere – so long as he gives them an emotionally gratifying “win” in the end. Of course, they will allow Obama himself to define the rules and objectives of the games he is playing, and thus to implicitly define what constitutes winning.
