No, Obama is not plunging neck-deep in the Big Muddy

"We don't have a strategy yet." Those words of Obama's in an Aug. 28 press conference so flipped out the foreign policy establishment and media that no one heard heard what Obama was saying.

A translation: The conditions are not yet in place for significant U.S. military action against ISIS in Syria. Our efforts now are concentrated on beginning to create such conditions.

Those who fear that Obama is poised to plunge neck-deep in the Syrian muddy (here's to you, Mr. Sullivan) might look again at how he has elaborated this point repeatedly  -- in press conferences on Sept. 3 and Sept. 5, and in his Meet the Press interview with Chuck Todd that aired Sept. 7.

Here's how he put it on Aug. 28:

Question for Obama: Why is arming a "moderate" Syrian opposition no longer a "fantasy"?

Back in January Obama suggested to David Remnick that trying to arm and shape a "moderate" opposition to Assad was futile:

... I asked Obama if he was haunted by Syria, and, though the mask of his equipoise rarely slips, an indignant expression crossed his face. “I am haunted by what’s happened,” he said. “I am not haunted by my decision not to engage in another Middle Eastern war. It is very difficult to imagine a scenario in which our involvement in Syria would have led to a better outcome, short of us being willing to undertake an effort in size and scope similar to what we did in Iraq. And when I hear people suggesting that somehow if we had just financed and armed the opposition earlier, that somehow Assad would be gone by now and we’d have a peaceful transition, it’s magical thinking.

“It’s not as if we didn’t discuss this extensively down in the Situation Room. It’s not as if we did not solicit—and continue to solicit—opinions from a wide range of folks. Very early in this process, I actually asked the C.I.A. to analyze examples of America financing and supplying arms to an insurgency in a country that actually worked out well. And they couldn’t come up with much. We have looked at this from every angle. 

More recently, he told members of Congress that the notion that the U.S. could have conjured an effective moderate opposition was "a fantasy."  Now, though, as he told Chuck Todd in an interview airing today, his nascent strategy in Syria depends on building such an opposition. When Todd challenged him as to how ISIS could be defeated in Syria without U.S. troops, here was his response:

Reminder: chained-CPI means new revenue

Chuck Todd, attempting to flesh out  some talk show chatter from Eric Cantor about budget compromise (GOP-style, i..e., with no new revenue), floats a GOP trial balloon:

Left unsaid by Cantor is what entitlement reform has to look like. There’s been some chatter in GOP circles that it’s about simply taking the president’s offer on chained CPI.  The argument by some Republicans on this strategy is that Republicans would be able to claim victory on stopping the sequester and getting an opening to begin entitlement reform without capitulating to the president’s demand that chained CPI (which would change Social Security benefits among other things) come with some new tax increases. But would the president be open to this? Chained CPI in exchange for turning off sequester? Seems reasonable now… but who knows.

"Not this time": Obama revises himself

The headline takeaway from Obama's press conference yesterday is that he's talking tough about the debt ceiling. And indeed, he elaborated his case against holding the faith and credit of the nation hostage in new and forceful ways. What also struck me, though, is the extent to which Obama implicitly admitted that the obstacles he is now facing are partly of his own making. In fact, since late in his reelection campaign he has been casting is second term as an edited version of the first.

On the economic front, Obama reiterated three core messages yesterday:1) The debt ceiling is no frame within which to negotiate deficit reduction; 2) deficit reduction is not our chief problem; and 3) Republicans' chief goal is to weaken core government functions and commitments, radically altering the social contract. Each was to some degree a revision of a past stance.

Regarding the debt ceiling, as Ezra Klein pointed out yesterday, Obama has been unequivocal since the election: it is not a negotiating chip in budget battles.  Yesterday he stated this simply, forcefully and repeatedly.  Here is the first iteration, in his opening remarks:

If Dems scotch a deal, cont.

Reports that Biden, taking up the fiscal cliff baton, is on the point of giving away the store have sparked deep depression in the left-side twittersphere this morning, leading me to this acid flashback:

@xpostfactoid1 another past pattern possible: Dems balk as crappy deal takes shape; O makes a last-minute ask to pacify them; Repubs reject & go home 7:53 AM - 31 Dec 12 · Details

And on cue, we have this from Senator Tom Harkin this morning:

December 31st, 2012 11:13 AM ET Washington (CNN) - Sen. Tom Harkin, a veteran Democrat and a leading liberal voice, told CNN Monday that he and other Democrats may try to block the fiscal cliff deal that's being furiously negotiated ahead of the year-end deadline.