THE MOST CRUCIAL difference between Clinton’s debt limit battle and the current crisis is that, in 1996, the Republicans were bluffing. No Republican seriously considered defaulting on the debt to be a viable option. “It was essentially unthinkable,”Alice Rivlin, director of the Office of Management and Budget under Clinton, told me. “There was nobody in the Congress who really contemplated forcing a default.” Larry Haas, communications director for the OMB from 1994 to 1997, agreed. “Everybody in the White House and on Capitol Hill knew that the conflict had to end at some point,” Hass told me.Then again, maybe the Tea Partiers were just bluffing.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
A Crucial Difference
Why did Obama "cave" when Clinton didn't? From an article getting quite a bit of attention, although not -- apparently -- this paragraph:
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I don't think they were bluffing, ut Obama should have bluffed on using the fourteenth amendment.
ReplyDeleteMaybe so. On the one hand, I am pretty sure the deal our political class struck was a mistake; on the other hand, I am pretty sure anything Obama did to slow down the crazies would have led to yet even more craziness.
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