As usual, the mainstream media has it, if not 100-percent wrong, pretty close.\u00a0 Here is a rundown of questions and answers, winners and losers coming out of the debt ceiling standoff.<\/p>\n
Question:\u00a0 <\/strong>Was it a long, hard negotiation?\u00a0 Answer:\u00a0 <\/strong>Hard, yes; long, no.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n OK, it seemed to go on forever.\u00a0 But that\u2019s because when 24\/7 cable news sinks its teeth into a story, the combined on-air man-years of Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, Fox Business, Bloomberg \u2013 have I missed anyone?\u00a0 Oh, yes, those broadcast guys, CBS, NBC, and ABC, I guess they still matter.\u00a0 When they get going, their combined time on air covering the story comes close to forever.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n But in fact the last several weeks were just the latest and a relatively brief showdown in a conflict that goes back to the Reagan years.\u00a0 In the early 80s, the GOP embraced lower taxes and domestic spending.\u00a0 The Democrats did exactly the opposite. A fiscal compromise emerged.\u00a0 Republicans got lower tax rates, but not as low as they wanted.\u00a0 Democrats got higher spending, but not as high as they would have liked.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Over the last few years, the game changed.\u00a0 Yes, the Bush administration allowed too much spending, in effect abdicating the GOP role as the spending restrainer in the two-party drama.\u00a0 But once the Obama administration and overwhelmingly Democratic 111th Congress took office, all balance disappeared.\u00a0 In less than two-and-a-half years they had all but exhausted the triple-A creditworthiness of the U.S. government, a stupendous accomplishment, if you call it that, in so short a time.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n With the 2010 election, a large and decisive segment of American voters stood athwart this segment of history and shouted \u201cstop.\u201d\u00a0 The last few weeks have been the first time Congress has played under the rules of this new reality.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Question: <\/strong>Was Congress childish, disgraceful, a mess?\u00a0 Answer:<\/strong> No, not at all.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n I know, all the polls say the public is disgusted.\u00a0 But the polls always show distaste for rancor in Washington.\u00a0 And the mainstream media are in a rage, largely because, as the CBS White House correspondent so tellingly put it in a question to Press Secretary Jay Carney yesterday, \u201cthey\u201d (the Republicans) got everything from the debt deal, \u201cwe\u201d (CBS, presumably, as well as Congressional Democrats and the White House) got nothing.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n But tough, out-in-the-open battles have been part of the American system since the Founding.\u00a0 In the United States, big issues get fought in full.\u00a0 And the debt issue is really a return to the battle at the Founding.\u00a0 What is the character of our government?\u00a0 How big can and should it be?\u00a0 How far can it reach into our lives?\u00a0 What is our character as a people?\u00a0 What is the nature of freedom in this republic?\u00a0 What is the character of our economy?\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n A big battle over such issues is anything but childish.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Who were the winners?<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Senator Mitch McConnell leads the pack.\u00a0 He put together the final deal.\u00a0 He showed what it means to be a big-time political leader.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n House Speaker John Boehner is also high on the list.\u00a0 He balanced a factious majority, keeping it together enough to control the House despite a united opposition. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Both the Congressional Republican Party and its Tea Party Caucus benefited together.\u00a0 After the spending of the Bush years, much of the GOP vote in the nation came to distrust the party in Congress.\u00a0 They needed to see Republican officeholders stand up to media fire and prevail before they would have confidence in GOP officials again.\u00a0 After these last few weeks, confidence may be starting to return.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Vice President Joe Biden also won.\u00a0 With McConnell, he put the deal together.\u00a0 Morning reports make it clear that only he could have taken that role on his side of the aisle.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The Democratic left also won.\u00a0 Their direct mail haul should soar in the next few months and their base harden.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Who were the losers?<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The single biggest loser has been the president.\u00a0 This morning\u2019s Politico<\/em> said this about his role in the talks: <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cMcConnell wanted to negotiate primarily with Biden, concerned that other Democrats, especially Obama, would prove to be less trustworthy bargaining partners\u2026.\u00a0 GOP House staffers were burnt out after months of fruitless meetings at the White House that they had taken to calling \u2018joke meetings\u2019 or worse still, \u2018Professor Obama\u2019s lectures.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Mr. Obama\u2019s problem is not this or that detail of the deal.\u00a0 It is that during weeks of intense public attention, he appeared passive, blustering, ineffective.\u00a0 \u201cHapless\u201d is how John Podhoretz, writing this morning in the New York Post<\/em>, summed it up.\u00a0 Clive Crook in today\u2019s Financial Times<\/em> observed that the president merely \u201cstood aside and let things happen,\u201d concluding \u201chis presidency is in trouble.\u201d When commentary from such very different quarters zeros in on the same conclusion about your performance in office, you are in trouble.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As usual, the mainstream media has it, if not 100-percent wrong, pretty close.\u00a0 Here is a rundown of questions and answers, winners and losers coming out of the debt ceiling standoff. Question:\u00a0 Was it a long, hard negotiation?\u00a0 Answer:\u00a0 Hard, yes; long, no.\u00a0 OK, it seemed to go on forever.\u00a0 But that\u2019s because when 24\/7 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-us-debt-crisis","tag-hugh-hewitt"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=931"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1017,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931\/revisions\/1017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}