A charitable hope for a President trying faith

Catching James Fallows by accident on NPR on Saturday, I sent him a note to say I shared his bemusement that Obama, announcing the budget deal, would positively boast about "the largest spending cuts in history." Fallows' response nicely captures my own faith-watered-to-hope:

This is a rough  time. We will hope that the qualities we admire in Obama outweigh the ones that make us nervous.

Come to think of it, if a leader is not a monster, fool, or knave, isn't this a wish for all seasons?

When all else fails, believe what he says?

Kevin Drum, nonplussed as all progressives are by Obama taking credit for the 2011 spending cuts wrung out by Republicans, circles round to an unconsidered explanation:

My best guess is also the most boring one: He actually thinks the cuts are a good idea. Macroeconomically they don't make sense, but as a signal they might be pretty powerful...my guess is that (1) Obama is serious about wanting to rein in the long-term deficit, (2) he thinks the cuts in this year's budget are a good way of signalling his seriousness, and (3) he also thinks that a few tens of billions of dollars in lost spending will have such a minor macroeconomic effect that it's a small price to pay.

Isn't it pretty to think so?  Like Drum, I struggle (here, here) with the gravitational pull of trusting Obama (and on the weekend, I speculated that the tax cut binge of late 2010 may have increased Obama's urge to gesture toward offsetting spending restraint). On the yield side, I would add that his claim that the just-concluded deal preserves his priority investments (as outlined in the SOTU) is worth at least a look as details emerge this week (along with Democratic claims that $17 billion of the cuts were offloaded onto mandatory spending programs, if that's anything to be cheered about).

Enough with the "what would China think?" shame spirals

This "whatever can the Chinese think?" meme is getting tired fast.  On Friday, Kerry; today, Kristof:

A bewildered Chinese friend asked me how the world’s leading democracy could be so mismanaged that it could shut down. I couldn’t explain. This budget war reflects inanity, incompetence and cowardice that are sadly inexplicable.

How about "explaining" that when faced with hard economic times extending through two election cycles, the American public twice threw out a set of incumbent officials -- as free electorates do -- and ended up with divided government?  The result is a bitter battle over fiscal policy. Those charged with making policy, instead of knifing out their radically different prescriptions behind closed Politburo doors, fought them out in a public display of negotiating brinkmanship and came up with a settlement in which both sides yielded some (though I personally think that through their own folly Democrats have yielded far too much).  There's nothing here to be embarrassed about before ruthless autocrats who have responded to the latest wave of democratic ferment abroad with a ferocious wave of repression and intimidation of dissent.

How did we get to a $39 billion headline?

Taking up a question from one of yesterday's posts:

P.S. Watching Democrats apparently give ground yard by yard -- from accepting a reported $32-33 billion in cuts earlier this week to  $37-38 billion today, not to say even getting in this range in the first place  --  is so baffling that I wonder, by defensive reflex if nothing else, if there isn't more to this than meets the eye. Are some of those billions illusory, i.e. offloaded into areas Democrats don't care about or want to cut?  Has the weighting changed in some way that offsets the sticker amount?  

 And how, given the final sticker amount, can Obama find the "audacity" to claim this?

But beginning to live within our means is the only way to protect those investments that will help America compete for new jobs -- investments in our kids’ education and student loans; in clean energy and life-saving medical research. We protected the investments we need to win the future.

Here is a Dem answer -- or spin:

“1) $17 BILLION IN ‘CHIMPS’ -- WE SPREAD OUT THE CUTS ACROSS OTHER PARTS OF THE BUDGET. We insisted that meeting in the middle on cuts would require looking beyond domestic discretionary spending—and we prevailed. More than half—or $17 billion—of the final round of spending cuts came from changes in mandatory programs, or CHIMPs. The emphasis on this part of the budget staved off severe cuts to key domestic programs like education, clean energy, and medical research. 

"The CHIMPS," cried Mr. Rochester. "Deuce take me if I did not forget the CHIMPS!"*   Or make that Mr. Rogers (David), who explained back on April 3:

Obama owns the Tea Party cuts

I find it disturbing that in his statement about tonight's 2011 budget deal,  Obama not only accepts but takes ownership of the $39 billion in discretionary spending cuts:

Some of the cuts we agreed to will be painful. Programs people rely on will be cut back. Needed infrastructure projects will be delayed. And I would not have made these cuts in better circumstances.

But beginning to live within our means is the only way to protect those investments that will help America compete for new jobs -- investments in our kids’ education and student loans; in clean energy and life-saving medical research. We protected the investments we need to win the future.

The palm goes to Boehner

If the rumored deal goes through tonight, it strikes me that Boehner is a winner.  I have to admit that I've been impressed with him in 2011.  In the endgame this week, he's managed to give the impression that a) he's being pushed from the right; b) he's faithfully representing the Tea Party agenda, and c) he does not want a shutdown. He's managed to rather massively move the goalposts on the Democrats (unless the spending numbers are jiggered and "40" somehow substantively equals "32") while holding out for the Tea Party riders to the point where prominent conservatives like Huckabee and Bachmann were urging him to deal.  He came home with at topline for cuts 33% higher than what Reid said earlier in the week was agreed on and an impression of having pushed as far as possible on the riders. For all the stories about Boehner being between a rock and a hard place, he seems to have wriggled through.

His victory, such as it is, may be a good thing. He didn't create, or elect, the Tea Party fanatics. He's a moderating influence.  He's given the (carefully meted out) impression that he can work with the President. And, to the extent possible in the age of GOP extremism, maybe he can.

Update, 11:38: a bit of supporting evidence from the Wall Street Journal:

Leaders of the small-government, tea-party movement are generally giving House Speaker John Boehner high marks for his leadership in the spending showdown, even though the agreement eventually reached Friday night fell short of the cuts the tea party once demanded.

Update, 4/9, 12:17: Weigel says it better:

Let’s go back to the raw politics. Can we say that Republicans got the better of the no-shutdown deal? Yes, because if there had been a shutdown, Republicans would have been blamed for it. The record was all cued up. Democrats spent months predicting that Boehner would have trouble controlling his new Tea Party members. They spent this week saying he had to put the Tea Party “horse back in the barn,” as Dick Durbin said. Well, there’s a deal – the implication is that he put the horse back in the barn. If the Republicans would have been blamed for a shutdown, it follows that they get credit for a shutdown being avoided.