Furthermore, the ripple effect can prove awesome. (See 1 below.)
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Suckers deal and the view from Saudi Arablia. (See 2, 2a and 2b below.)
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3) Obama's image was made up of too many lies and too much yarn and now has begun to unravel. (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)Obama Plummeting With Investors in Poll as Stocks Make New Highs
Global investors’ confidence in President Barack Obama plunged during the past two months after the government shutdown, a new poll shows, even as stocks traded at record highs and bond yields remained near historic lows.
Just 38 percent of respondents to a Bloomberg Global Poll view Obama favorably as they anticipate another shutdown and more damage to the U.S. economy next year from political gridlock. That’s the lowest since the question was first asked in July 2009 and down from 50 percent in September.
Opinions of congressional Republicans also fell to a new bottom, with only 19 percent viewing the party positively, down from 28 percent in September 2012. Favorable views of Democrats were little changed, rising to 30 percent from 29 percent in September 2012, according to the Nov. 19 survey of 750 investors, analysts and traders who are Bloomberg subscribers.
“I’m concerned that, unless there’s somebody that can show some leadership in Washington, continuing this dancing with the cliff is not going to help the economy,” says Rick Wayman, 57, a portfolio manager in Columbus, Ohio, with New Albany Capital Partners LLC.
Fifty-two percent of poll respondents say another federal government closure is likely within six months, following a standoff in October that led to a partial shutdown for 16 days and brought the nation to the brink of a debt default. Seventy- one percent say they expect political gridlock in Washington to affect U.S. economic growth next year.
Markets Strong
Reservations over political leadership and budget policy haven’t stopped the flow of money into U.S. financial markets. The benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index has surged about 26 percent this year, poised for its best yearly gain in a decade. Since the last investor poll was taken on Sept. 10, the market gauge has risen 6.6 percent.
Bond investors also have shown little concern over the events in Washington. Ten-year U.S. Treasury bonds yielded 2.79 percent at 4 p.m. Thursday in New York compared with an average 4.61 percent yield during the past two decades.
U.S. real estate is rebounding, with the median price of an existing home up 12.8 percent in October from a year earlier. In August, median home prices jumped 13.4 percent from a year earlier, the fastest rate since the height of the real estate boom in 2005.
Temporary Deal
Still, the poll shows that concern over a new shutdown lingers because the agreement Obama reached with Republicans to end the deadlock will fund the government only through Jan. 15 while extending the legal debt limit to Feb. 7.
The federal budget deficit for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30 declined to $680 billion from $1.1 trillion the prior year as Congress raised taxes and cut spending.
Even so, investors consider the political stalemate over government finances the gravest danger to the global economy; it is cited as the biggest risk by 35 percent, up from 26 percent in September. Slowing growth in China, which topped the list of risks in the last poll, is cited by 26 percent this time.
Obama’s signature health-care program is weighing on some respondents as it has been marred by flaws in the federal online insurance exchange since it debuted Oct. 1. Cancellation notices that insurance companies sent out to hundreds of thousands of individual policyholders provoked a furor that Obama responded to by urging states to permit renewal of the plans for a year.
Sixty-eight percent of poll respondents say they are pessimistic about the impact Obama’s policies will have on the investment climate in the U.S., up from 52 percent in September.
Overseas Investors
Disclosures of National Security Agency spying continue to dog Obama. Fifty-six percent of poll respondents say revelations that the NSA eavesdropped on phone conversations of world leaders, including Germany’s Angela Merkel, are a “big problem” for U.S. credibility.
Respondents say the disclosures are a “major concern” undermining confidence in the privacy safeguards of U.S.-based technology companies such as Google Inc., Facebook Inc. and Apple Inc.
The decline in the president’s standing is most precipitous among investors outside the U.S., who have consistently viewed him more favorably than have American investors.
Forty-eight percent of poll respondents overseas have a favorable opinion of Obama, down from 64 percent in September; 21 percent of U.S respondents hold a positive view of the president, down from 25 percent in September.
‘Bungled Rollout’
Kenneth Broux, a strategist at Societe Generale in London, says his diminished confidence in Obama is “mainly a reflection of the federal shutdown and bungled rollout of Obamacare.” Foreign policy, he adds, “has been a disaster.”
Respondents don’t expect Washington to make any progress in addressing the nation’s long-term budgetary issues when Republicans and Democrats reach the next deadline as government funding runs out in January. Fewer than a quarter say lawmakers are likely to reach an agreement settling the partisan clash over taxes and spending for even two or three years.
By a margin of 50 percent to 40 percent, poll respondents say the U.S. should pursue more austerity rather than more fiscal stimulus, with the remainder undecided.
The poll was conducted by Selzer & Co. of Des Moines, Iowa. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.
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2) 'Sucker's deal'
Charles Krauthammer
A president desperate to change the subject and a secretary of state desperate to make a name for himself are reportedly on the verge of an “interim” nuclear agreement with Iran. France called it a “sucker’s deal.” France was being charitable.
The only reason Iran has come to the table after a decade of contemptuous stonewalling is that economic sanctions have cut so deeply — its currency has collapsed, inflation is rampant — that the regime fears a threat to its very survival.
Nothing else could move it to negotiate. Regime survival is the only thing themullahs value above nuclear weapons. And yet precisely at the point of maximum leverage, President Obama is offering relief in a deal that is absurdly asymmetric: The West would weaken sanctions in exchange for cosmetic changes that do absolutely nothing to weaken Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.
Don’t worry, we are assured. This is only an interim six-month agreement to “build confidence” until we reach a final one. But this makes no sense. If at this point of maximum economic pressure we can’t get Iran to accept a final deal that shuts down its nuclear program, how in God’s name do we expect to get such a deal when we have radically reduced that pressure?
A bizarre negotiating tactic. And the content of the deal is even worse. It’s a rescue package for the mullahs.
It widens permissible trade in oil, gold and auto parts. It releases frozen Iranian assets, increasing Iran’s foreign-exchange reserves by 25 percent while doubling its fully accessible foreign-exchange reserves. Such a massive infusion of cash would be a godsend for its staggering economy, lowering inflation, reducing shortages and halting the country’s growing demoralization. The prospective deal is already changing economic expectations. Foreign oil and other interests are reportedly preparing to reopen negotiations for a resumption of trade in anticipation of the full lifting of sanctions.
And for what? You’d offer such relief in return for Iran giving up its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Isn’t that what the entire exercise is about?
And yet this deal does nothing of the sort. Nothing. It leaves Iran’s nuclear infrastructure intact. Iran keeps every one of its 19,000 centrifuges — yes, 19,000 — including 3,000 second-generation machines that produce enriched uranium at five times the rate of the older ones.
Not a single centrifuge is dismantled. Not a single facility that manufactures centrifuges is touched. In Syria, the first thing the weapons inspectors did was to destroy the machines that make the chemical weapons. Then they went after the stockpiles. It has to be that way. Otherwise, the whole operation is an exercise in futility. Take away just the chemical agents, and the weapons-making facilities can replace them at will.
Yet that’s exactly what we’re doing with Iran. It would deactivate its 20 percent enriched uranium, which besides being chemically reversible, is quickly replaceable because Iran retains its 3.5 percent enriched uranium, which can be enriched to 20 percent in less than a month.
Result: Sanctions relief that leaves Iran’s nuclear infrastructure untouched, including — and this is where the French gagged — the plutonium facility at Arak, a defiant alternate path to a nuclear weapon.
The point is blindingly simple. Unless you dismantle the centrifuges and prevent the manufacture of new ones, Iran will be perpetually just a few months away from going nuclear. This agreement, which is now reportedly being drafted to allow Iran to interpret it as granting the “right” to enrich uranium, constitutes the West legitimizing Iran’s status as a threshold nuclear state.
Don’t worry, we are assured. The sanctions relief is reversible. Nonsense. It was extraordinarily difficult to cobble together the current sanctions. It took endless years of overcoming Russian, Chinese and Indian recalcitrance, together with foot-dragging from Europeans making a pretty penny from Iran.
Once the relaxation begins, how do you reverse it? How do you reapply sanctions? There is absolutely no appetite for this among our allies. And adding back old sanctions will be denounced as a provocation that would drive Iran to a nuclear breakout — exactly as Obama is today denouncing congressional moves to increase sanctions as a deal-breaking provocationthat might lead Iran to break off talks.
The mullahs are eager for this interim agreement with its immediate yield of political and economic relief. Once they get it, we will have removed their one incentive to conclude the only agreement that is worth anything to us — a verifiable giving up of their nuclear program.
2y 2a Prince Alwaleed bin Talal: An Ally Frets About American Retreat
Influential Saudi royal Prince Alwaleed bin Talal talks about the U.S. debacle in Syria, the Iranian threat, and 'this perception that America is going down.'
'The U.S. has to have a foreign policy. Well-defined, well-structured. You don't have it right now, unfortunately. It's just complete chaos. Confusion. No policy. I mean, we feel it. We sense it, you know."
Members of the Saudi royal family have voiced their displeasure with the Obama administration's approach to the Middle East through private channels and recently in public as well. None of them puts it quite like HRH Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Alsaud.
One of some three-dozen living grandsons of the first Saudi King Abdulaziz, this prince is a prominent but atypical royal. His investment company made him the Arab world's richest businessman. He strikes a modern image for a Saudi, employing female aides and jet-setting on a private Boeing BA +2.29% 747. He's at ease with Western media.
Passing through New York earlier this week, Mr. Alwaleed, who is 58, sits down with the Journal editorial board between a couple of television appearances. He wears a blue suit, shirt and tie. These days, his bouffant widow's peak has more salt than pepper. The prince holds no important government post in Saudi Arabia, but it's hard to shake the impression that here is the uncensored id of the reserved House of Saud.
"America is shooting itself in the foot," he says. "Saudi Arabia and me, myself, we love the United States. But what's happening right now here, from Republicans and Democrats, is just not helping the image of the United States and is making this perception that America is going down a reality."
Neil Davies
Mr. Alwaleed struggles to understand how a wing of the GOP can shut down the government and threaten a debt default. His company has a significant economic bet on the U.S. through Twitter TWTR -2.52% and New York's Plaza Hotel, among many holdings. As for President Obama, his second term is "going downhill completely," he says, adding on several occasions the disclaimer that "this is the impression I have in Saudi Arabia." But it's clear that the Saudis believe that the president's political troubles shape his actions in their region.
Mr. Obama's recent Hamlet act on Syria surprised and infuriated Riyadh. After the worst chemical-weapons atrocity of the war, the American leader heeded long-standing calls for military intervention, then hedged by asking for congressional approval, then nixed airstrikes in favor of a disarmament pact with Syria's Bashar Assad. The civil war continued—with Assad and his Iranian allies lately taking the upper hand. Mr. Alwaleed says of Mr. Obama: "He blinked."
Then came the autumn outreach to Iran's new president, Hasan Rouhani, leading to this week's negotiations in Geneva on Iran's nuclear program. Another "impression" from the prince: President Obama's falling popularity explains his "overeagerness" for an agreement made "very fast to at least put one issue in foreign policy aside" because "he's wounded now across the board." The Saudis view the Shiite theocracy in Tehran as the biggest threat to the Sunni Arab world.
Though the American public soured on Saudi Arabia after the 9/11 terror attacks were organized by a Saudi, Washington and Riyadh remained on good terms. But now relations are strained, perhaps the worst breach since the 1980s fight over the proposed sale of U.S. Awacs planes to the kingdom. A frequent Saudi complaint these days is that this White House doesn't listen to them or reveal its true intentions.
"Frankly speaking," Mr. Alwaleed says, during the first Obama term "his communication was almost nil," aside from a brief visit with King Abdullah in Riyadh in 2009. Ronald Reagan and every president since cultivated personal ties, but "Obama is very cold because he is very, very immersed" in domestic policy.
Hillary Clinton, who logged 956,733 air miles in four years at the State Department, came to Saudi Arabia once. "She was not really tackling the Middle East," the prince says. In less than a year at Foggy Bottom, John Kerry has called on the Saudis three times, and the royals appreciate his engagement.
The deal on offer in Geneva this week relaxes sanctions on Iran in exchange for promises to slow work on parts of the nuclear program. The Saudis and Israelis have both pre-emptively condemned any agreement that doesn't dismantle Iran's ability to enrich uranium and build a bomb. This one won't. Mr. Alwaleed says the Saudis are trying to "put maximum pressure now on the United States not to succumb to the president of Iran's soft talk."
He endorses Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's line to describe Mr. Rouhani: "a wolf in sheep's clothing." He notes this startling alliance of Wahhabist Saudi Arabia, custodian of Islam's holiest sites, and the Jewish state. "For the first time, Saudi Arabian interests and Israel are almost parallel," he says, his voice rising. "It's incredible."
The prince stops short of endorsing an Israeli military strike on Iran, but in the same breath says he thinks a military option to "neutralize" Iran's nuclear potential is preferable to a bad diplomatic deal.
If Iran does go nuclear, Saudi Arabia may not be far behind. It has options. Riyadh underwrote Pakistan's atomic-bomb program and keeps the country's economy afloat with its largess. The "arrangement with Pakistan is too strong" to dismiss an almost overnight nuclearization of the Arab peninsula with their help, Mr. Alwaleed suggests. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who returned to power in June, lived in Saudi exile after a 1999 military coup. "Nawaz Sharif, specifically, is very much Saudi Arabia's man in Pakistan," Mr. Alwaleed says.
The Obama administration's disengagement from the Middle East was implicit in the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq and the refusal to arm Syria's rebels. Susan Rice, the national security adviser, was explicit last month in an interview with the New York Times NYT +0.65% that the White House had adopted a new policy to scale back America's involvement: "We can't just be consumed 24/7 by one region, important as it is."
As the U.S. distanced itself from Egypt after July's military coup, Russia has offered Cairo arms and support. The Chinese are in no position or mood to take the baton of regional enforcer from the U.S., which polices the Strait of Hormuz to keep it open for oil tankers and protects friendly Gulf states. But the Saudis are getting along better by the day with Beijing, says Mr. Alwaleed, adding that "China is very eager to fill any vacuum that the United States may create." Bluff, threat or prediction? Check back in a few years.
Another feature of the Obama era is the regional freelancing by countries that previously deferred to Washington. Defying the U.S., the Saudis in 2011 sent soldiers over the causeway into Bahrain to protect the island's Sunni king from street demonstrations by members of the Shiite majority pressing for greater political rights. The Saudi royals also blamed Washington for abandoning an old American friend in Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, who was deposed in February 2011. For the record, Mr. Alwaleed thinks the Mubarak presidency was unsalvageable.
From the start of the Syrian conflict, Saudi and Qatari support flowed to the anti-Assad rebels. Mr. Obama held back before permitting small-arms deliveries in recent months. But Assad's chemical attacks and an emergency lifeline of Iranian fighters, money and arms have turned the tide of the war. Mr. Alwaleed says Riyadh has upped its weapons supplies and training for the rebels but can't do as much as a superpower.
As the West stood aside, extremist factions in the rebel coalition strengthened and turned on each other. Some are linked to al Qaeda, "really savages, like in Afghanistan," says Mr. Alwaleed. Of course, Gulf money and weapons also went to them, as it goes to their brethren in Afghanistan and Pakistan today—but that's left unsaid.
Mr. Alwaleed believes that Washington has now decided to keep Assad in place at least long enough to surrender his chemical weapons stockpile. "The U.S. policy is to have the devil you know," he says. "Saudi policy is to have any devil in Syria other than the devil you know."
Educated in the U.S., Mr. Alwaleed has said he started off in 1979 with a $30,000 loan from his father to create Kingdom Holding Co., a diversified-investment firm. The prince denies persistent rumors that the company is an investment front for other Saudi royals who guard their anonymity.
Mr. Alwaleed came to business prominence in the U.S. with a $590 million cash infusion into Citicorp in 1991. Later that decade, he took a 5% stake in News Corp. NWSA -0.06%that is now 7%. He's the third-largest shareholder in the company that publishes The Wall Street Journal.
When Forbes this spring put him 26th on its annual list of the world's richest, with a fortune estimated at $20 billion, Mr. Alwaleed said the magazine shortchanged him, and he threatened to sue. He visibly relishes the perks of princely billionairehood.
Some false steps have hurt his reputation. Days after 9/11, Mr. Alwaleed donated $10 million to New York City accompanied by a statement that the U.S. government "should re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stance toward the Palestinian cause." Mayor Rudy Giuliani returned the check.
The House of Saud's concern about the U.S. these days isn't merely about foreign policy. The American energy revolution is also a potential threat. Driven by technological advances in shale exploration, the U.S. will pass Saudi Arabia and Russia as the world's top oil producer by 2015, the International Energy Agency said this month. Mr. Alwaleed hasn't looked at possible investments in shale—at least "not yet."
As for the Saudis' own bottom line: With America's reliance on imported oil declining, he warned his government a few months ago about the kingdom's unhealthy dependence on oil-export revenues. But Mr. Alwaleed also says the world will always demand Saudi Arabia's cheaply drilled crude.
The political upheavals in Tunisia and Egypt that began almost three years ago sent a tremble through the House of Saud. King Abdullah, who turns 90 next year, moved to head off discontent by pouring more than $130 billion into jobs and housing for young Saudis. The strategy eased any pressure to open up the absolutist monarchy. Mr. Alwaleed takes pains to mention his support for reform and the gradual modernization of Saudi Arabia, including the right of women to drive.
Concerns about the health of King Abdullah and an uncertain succession hang heavy over Saudi Arabia's future. Mr. Alwaleed's father sits on an Allegiance Council created early in King Abdullah's reign to formalize the selection of monarchs. This new system, he repeats more than once, is "untested." Mr. Alwaleed's mixed Lebanese heritage through his mother, among other reasons, virtually rules him out from consideration.
America's current arm's-length approach to the region presents an opening as well as a danger for the Saudis. After July's coup in Egypt, Riyadh gave the new military-backed government $5 billion to tide the country's economy over for a few months. The rise of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and demands for popular democracy were unwelcome in Riyadh. Mr. Alwaleed notes that Saudi diplomacy also carries a fat checkbook in Jordan, Palestine and Yemen, which are in his words "under our hegemony."
"If you look at a map of the Arab world now, Saudi Arabia is very much the leader," says the prince. "America cannot afford to have the leader of the Arab world not be on the same wave length as the United States."
2b Dangerous Times: A Looming Strategic Disaster in the Middle East.
By James Lewis
If you think ObamaCare is bad, just wait till you hear the new "peace" agreement that is due to be imposed on the Middle East over the coming weeks. Even if it works, a giant if, it will make the world much more dangerous:
1. Iran will have nuclear weapons, or it will be balanced right on the edge -- within one month or less to make nukes.
2. Saudi Arabia and Egypt will go nuclear, to balance Iran.
3. America's role as a guarantor of peace will be blown, crushed by Obama's betrayal of Israel and the Arabs. America's nuclear umbrella, which has kept world from major war since 1949, was always based on trust. Once you blow that trust, the umbrella disappears.
4. The coming victory of Bashar Assad in Syria, supported by Hizb'allah and Iran, will forge the much-feared Shii'ite Crescent that surrounds Israel and directly threatens Arab nations like Egypt, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula (Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states).
5. Russia will replace America as a more trustworthy major power in the region, including the Eastern Mediterranean.
The emerging agreement, which will be greeted by the Euro-American socialist media as peace on earth, will be much more like Munich, 1938 -- a temporary truce on the way to much more dangerous times.
Here is a reasonable guess about the Obama-Putin proposal that is now being circulated around the major participants:
1. The U.S. and Russia will agree to cut back drastically on nuclear weapons. That has been the major aim of the Russians, because they can defend against a small nuclear attack, but more attacking nukes and missiles will overwhelm any existing defense. This has its own pros and cons, depending on Russian intentions. It is a major draw for Putin, because it reinstates Russia as a superpower on an equal basis with the United States.
2. American power will be deliberately set back around the world, which is Obama's announced policy. The U.S. will no longer be the guarantor of peace, because (a) Obama has decided to cut down our armed forces to divert money to the new massive welfare state, and (b) nobody trusts us to provide a nuclear umbrella any more.
Within that U.S.-Russian umbrella agreement, the Obama fantasy will be that:
1. The Iranian nuclear danger will be reduced by a treaty, to be monitored by a great power inspection regime, aided by the UN. Because Russia will be one of the guarantor powers, and because Russia fears and hates the prospect of a radical Muslim nuclear power near its borders, it will want to restrain Iranian weapons development. However, Iran will be able to get real nukes in a month. Other WMD programs (like dirty bombs) are not controlled, especially from rogue forces like the 60,000 Al Qaida gangsters in Syria.
Obama and the Europeans will celebrate this as a great victory. But it will be a huge gamble with the security of the world. In the foreseeable future Iran will have ICBM's that can reach our shores.
Hamas and Hizb'allah terrorism will be increased rather than stopped, because that is the routine of every Muslim power in history. For example, Pakistan and India are nominally not at war, but Pakistan has never stopped terrorist attacks on India. That is the standard strategy for Muslim powers, and having nuclear weapons will make terrorism even more attractive.
2. The Europeans will lose the American nuclear umbrella, and will appeal to Russia for nuclear protection. They must also modernize the nuclear capacity of France and Britain, because this will not be a one- or two-superpower world, but an ongoing arms race between multiple powers, all possessing weapons of mass destruction. The UN will pretend to conduct inspections, just as it did in Iraq and Iran, a laughable failure.
In other words, this will be a fantasy peace, just as ObamaCare is a fantasy healthcare program. Obama craves the appearance of success, but in truth he never bothers to find out if his fantasies actually work. He is hooked on personal celebrity.
Obama is likely to run for UN SecGen after 2016, a major reason for this dreadfully unstable, phony solution to nuclear and missile proliferation. Obama's personal ambition is a big ingredient in anything he does. The Russians have figured that out, and saw it as an opportunity to reverse their decline as a superpower. Domestically we no longer have a functioning opposition, so that there is no critical thinking about absurd policies any more. That is why ObamaCare is likely to fail over and over again. A number of O'Care "architects" have come forward in the last week to confess that yes, of course they were lying to Americans about their future healthcare. But they were lying for a good cause, naturally. In fact, they were making wild guesses and now have Americans in a trap. They won't allow us to escape their fantasy trap no matter how bad it gets.
The same mad illogic governs this Middle East "peace" process. It's just as phony and destructive as Obama's medical takeover. The top goal is more power for the socialists. Healthcare and peace are strictly secondary.
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3) How a presidency unravels
For concision and precision in describing Barack Obama’s suddenly ambivalent relationship with his singular — actually, his single — achievement, the laurels go to Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.).
After Obama’s semi-demi-apology for millions of canceled insurance policies — an intended and predictable consequence of his crusade to liberate Americans from their childish choices of “substandard” policies sold by “bad apple” insurers — Scalise said Obama is like someone who burns down your house. Then shows up with an empty water bucket. Then lectures you about how defective the house was.
What is now inexplicably called Obama’s “fix” for the chaos he has created is surreal. He gives you permission to reoccupy your house — if you can get someone to rebuild it — but for only another year.
At least he has banished boredom from millions of lives. Although probably not from his.
The place to begin understanding the unraveling of his presidency is page 274 of “The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama.” The author, David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, quotes Valerie Jarrett, perhaps Obama’s closest and longest-serving adviser, on her hero’s amazingness:
“He knows exactly how smart he is. . . . I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually. . . . He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do. He would never be satisfied with what ordinary people do.”
Leave aside the question of whether someone so smitten can be in any meaningful sense an adviser. About what can such a paragon as Obama need advice? (Although he did recently say, “What we’re also discovering is that insurance is complicated to buy.” Just to buy.) It is, however, fair to note that what ordinary people ordinarily do is their jobs, competently. Obama’s inability to be satisfied with anything so banal has plunged him into Jimmy Carter territory.
Carter’s presidency crumbled when people decided they still liked his character but had no confidence in his competence. Obamacare’s misadventures, and Obama’s response to them, have caused people to doubt both his character and his competence.
The White House, disoriented by adoration — including the self-adoration — of its principal occupant, sits in a city that has become addicted to its own adrenaline. It is in a perpetual swivet stoked by media for which every inter-institutional dust-up is a crisis.
This year began with the “fiscal cliff” crisis. (You may have forgotten, there having been so many supposedly epochal events to keep track of: All the Bush tax cuts were set to expire; the “crisis” ended when only those cuts for the wealthy were allowed to lapse.)
Then came spring and the “sequester crisis,” meaning discretionary spending “slashed” by “draconian” cuts of . . . 2.3 percent. Autumn brought the crisis of the shutdown of (part of) the government and the crisis surrounding the inevitable raising of the debt ceiling. The ostensible crisis was that the Obama administration might choose to default on the nation’s debt even though government revenues were 10 times larger than required to service the debt.
Good grief. The 1854 passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act was a crisis. As was the 1857Dred Scott decision, the Great Depression and Pearl Harbor. But as for 2013’s blizzard of supposed crises: Arguments between the houses of Congress, or between the executive and legislative branches, about money should not be called crises; they should be called politics. The separation of powers that is the essence of the constitutional system assumes rivalrous institutions. When, however, the conflict is not about money but about the nation’s constitutional architecture, perhaps the language of crisis is apposite.
The New York Times reports that last March Henry Chao of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which superintended creation of the HealthCare.gov Web site, told a conference that he had worries: “Let’s just make sure it’s not a third-world experience.” When such an embarrassing experience occurred, Obama responded like a ruler of a banana republic unfettered by constitutionalism and the rule of law. Although no president has even a line-item veto power (which 44 governors have), this president asserts the power to revise the language of laws by “enforcement discretion,” and suggests no limiting principle.
But even this is a crisis only if Congress makes it so by supine acquiescence. Congressional Democrats are White House poodles. They also are progressives and therefore disposed to favor unfettered executive power. Republicans are supposed to be different.
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