The answer appears to be that he just doesn’t think they’ll do it, doesn’t think Republicans will take us to the brink of catastrophic default again, since the last time they did it was such a disaster. President Obama obviously hasn’t seen Jungle Fever.
In that Spike Lee joint, Wesley Snipes‘ main character, Flipper, is the responsible younger brother of a crackhead named Gator, memorably portrayed by
Set aside the irony that, in this metaphor, hurting old people is the crack. Why does the threat work on Flipper? Partly because Gator has obviously made good on it in the past, just as Republicans have, resulting in the first-ever U.S. credit downgrade. Just as Flipper tries to refuse Gator, President Obama is now firmly telling Republicans he won’t “play that game,” but the more Republicans dance around and chant, “You know I’ll do it,” the more President Obama will be reminded that they are, metaphorically, a crackhead, and aren’t as concerned with the consequences of their actions as normal people.
But that’s not the only reason it works. Gator doesn’t have to threaten Flipper to get some money, he could just skip that step, and go rob some old people. He threatens Flipper because he knows that Flipper believes he will rob old people, allowing Gator to get the
Similarly, Republicans know they can extract concessions from the President, because they have before, without actually causing a default. There’s nothing President Obama can do to make Republicans believe he would actually allow them to cause a default, or even get close enough to spook the ratings agencies and the markets. The President has assumed a measure of moral culpability for his crackhead congressional brother’s recklessness, and no one believes he will let them anywhere near a default. Unless something changes, this debt ceiling fight will end with Gator getting high, and Flipper yelling after him how he’s never going to do this again.
Unfortunately, President Obama can’t put Gator into rehab, because midterm voters in 2010 gave Gator the keys to the electoral map. The President has also ruled out the Ossie Davis option, whereby he unilaterally raises the debt ceiling under an interpretation of Section 4 of the 14th Amendment, which states that “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”
It’s an option that President Obama didn’t rule out during the last doomsday threat, but ultimately failed
But what if, instead of waiting for a desperate Gator to seek him out, Flipper went to Gator when he was holding, and snatched a big bag of crack away from him? Then, he could get Gator to approve a debt ceiling increase by threatening to flush Gator’s crack down the toilet. He could probably even get Gator to go for the Mitch McConnell plan, which would require a 2/3 majority to stop a debt limit increase.
As it happens, President Obama already possesses a decent quantity of Gator’s crack. He just needs to wave it over the nearest toilet. If there’s anything that gets Republicans higher than cutting safety net programs for the poor and the elderly, or cutting taxes for the rich, it’s defense spending, and in 60 days, those tasty rocks go right into
It does no good to wave that crack bag when Gator is already mugging an old lady, but if President Obama whips it out now, that puts him in control. Gator knows he’ll do it, and he really wants that crack. The President should tell congressional Republicans that there will be no negotiations on the sequester cuts at all until they pass a clean debt limit increase, including the McConnell clause, then let them dance. They voted for the sequester cuts, so they can dance their way out of them.
Barring that, President Obama is just sitting on that playground, hoping that Gator will suddenly gain some sense of personal responsibility this time, and won’t really crash the world economy, but deep down, he knows they’ll do it, and so do we.