Fiscal cliff notes: speak however, but wield that stick

Re the fiscal cliff: Obama has promised repeatedly, from the December 2010 press conference in which he announced his Bush-tax-cut-extension-for-payroll-tax-cut-and-unemployment-benefit-extension deal, to the present, that he would not agree to another extension of the Bush marginal rate cuts for the wealthiest 2% this time around.

He gained further leverage when the "sequestered" budget cuts triggered by the failure of the budget supercommittee last November became law -- and Republicans began screaming about the mandated defense cuts far louder than Democrats have protested the domestic cuts.  Once Obama refused to lift a finger to stop the sequester, I began to wonder whether the Budget Control Act of August 2011 wasn't a 60-yard punt.  If so, he is now taking possession.

After coming close to ratifying a truly crappy grand bargain with Boehner in July 2011, has Obama learned to use the leverage he's gathered?  Signs are that he may have. Here's what he told the Des Moines Register a couple of weeks ago:

Obama looks forward to the whip hand

There are no real surprises in Obama's "off the record" interview with the Des Moines Register, which the administration very sensibly put on the record after being publicly challenged to do so by editor Rick Green  (kudos to Green for getting it done). But there is some blunt talk, and a coherent vision of sustainable economic growth laid out in more detail than the campaign trail allows.

The blunt talk,  about how he will deal with Republicans in upcoming months, highlights lessons learned in the debt ceiling negotiations of summer. There's no mention of a mutual will to compromise, or coming together for the good of the country, or both sides giving a little, or there being good ideas on both sides. It's about leverage, or rather, a set of blunt instruments: