It's hard not to wish for more but -- if you know anything about government and particularly this administration at this point in history, you know that already the president is being obliged to play very, very edgy chess games on hundreds of chessboards simultaneously. Not only that, the Republicans are making sure there's no break in the pressure.
Overall, Barack Obama may well turn out to be the most deft politician of any of them. That's what this is all about: politics, battle plans, and survival. He didn't turn up at a protest? He hasn't said exactly what you'd like to hear? You really want him to walk away from the Koch, Libya, Pakistan, Kabul and government shutdown chessboards to give you a few strokes?
As for the prospect of a government shutdown, Frank Rich lays it out:
Last time around [in 1995], America was more or less humming along with an unemployment rate of 5.6 percent. This time we are still digging out of the worst financial disaster since the Great Depression, with an unemployment rate of 9 percent and oil prices on the rise. To even toy with shutting down the government in this uncertain climate is to risk destabilizing the nascent recovery, with those in need of the government safety net (including 43 million Americans on food stamps) doing most of the suffering.
Not that the gravity of this moment will necessarily stop the right from using the same playbook as last time. Still heady with hubris from the midterms — and having persuaded themselves that Gingrich’s 1995 history can’t possibly repeat itself — radical Republicans are convinced that deficit-addled voters are on their side no matter what. The president, meanwhile, is playing his cards close to his vest. Let’s hope he knows that he, not the speaker, is the player holding a full house, and that he will tell the country in no uncertain terms that much more than money is on the table.
