Obama’s Anger: The Fight For Fairness

21 September 2011 |permalink | email article

The grand bargain is back, as Slate’s John Dickerson points out, and it’s an angry Barack Obama this time. When he put forward his long-term, $3.6 trillion-deficit reduction plan Monday in the Rose Garden it was delivered in a stern and blunt tone. It had a lot to do with a good working relationship he almost reached with former golfing buddy John Boehner before the House Speaker abandoned their budget talks in July, came back and then walked out a second time.

After what the White House saw as a third strike this month – Boehner’s humiliating public rejection of Obama’s request for an addresses to a joint session of Congress – Obama’s team called Boehner out.

Obama’s remarks singled out Boehner in his criticism of Republicans as unwilling to compromise, a shift from the past when he singed Republicans but mentioned Boehner only to praise him, as The New York Times reported, as a constructive partner. Not this time. “Unfortunately, the speaker walked away from a balanced package,” the president said referring to their earlier talks. “What we agreed to instead wasn’t all that grand.” In the past Obama has never been able to stay angry. So his latest economic plan will test whether he can recapture Harry Truman’s anger at “do nothing” Republicans in 1948. 

Clueless GOP

As far back as July a Washington Post poll indicated that 72 percent of those surveyed supported raising taxes on people with incomes of more than $250,000 a year to help reduce the national debt while 55 percent supported it strongly. CNN recently found that 62 percent of independents think the super committee should help close the deficit by hiking taxes on the wealth and corporations. Gallup recently found that 64 percent of independents favor increasing taxes on the rich as a way to reduce Federal debt. 

What They Said

“But Obama’s new proposal for a “Buffett Rule” – requiring millionaires to pay a higher tax rate than middle income folks – is explicitly about dealing with this problem. It’s about drawing a sharper line that will be harder for the Republicans to blur. It’s about winning back independents.” – Greg Sargent, Plum Line, Washington Post

“So the White House has moved away from the Reasonable Man approach or the centrist Clinton approach. It has gone back, as the appreciative Ezra Klein of The Washington Post conceded, to politics as usual.” – David Brooks, in The New York Times

“What the president proposed this morning is simply where the American people are at.” – Blogger Andrew Sullivan

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