Cliff Diving

We are just over 24 hours from officially going over the Fiscal Cliff.

Photo Credit: Boney Dias, www.trekearth.com
Waterfall and statutes inside the Dubai Mall

What a sad testament to the leadership of our President and the workings of our Congressional representatives.  We are not talking about something that snuck up on them.  This specific issue has been front and center for at least two years when the Bush tax cuts were first extended.  The issue even got messier when the can of necessary spending cuts got kicked down the road in the aftermath of the failure of the debt limit talks in August, 2011.

I know the Media is eager to blame the intransigent Republicans in the House but we also have not seen Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Democrats in Senate do any better.  Of course, anyone who understands our system knows that this is really a total failure of leadership from our President.

Two Beltway insiders on different ends of the political spectrum, Evan Thomas, former Newsweek editor, and syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer both point the finger of blame squarely at President Obama in The Daily Caller.

“This is not Congress’ fault,” Thomas said. “Congress is behaving like Congress. This is the president’s fault. The president needs to go to the country and explain why they need to get this done. He has never done that.” 

Thomas later reiterated his point by saying the aftermath of the election is a time for the president to spend his political capital not on gaining political advantage, but on solving a crisis.

“All political advances are with the president,” Thomas added. “What is he running for? He won, right? This is his time to actually take some political hits and tell the truth for a change instead of trying to get political advantage.”

Krauthammer adds,

“The president has never gone to the nation and made a serious speech about debt,” Krauthammer said. “He ignored it the first two years. He appoints a commission that he studiously ignores for the next two years. That’s why we’re at the cliff now. He’s not serious about the debt — none of his proposals. You raise the taxes on the rich, it’s eight cents on the dollar on the deficit. It reduces it a trivial amount of money and he’s never put any political capital in entitlement reform or tax reform. Oh, we’ll talk about it here and there — never invested any capital in it."

I have no doubt that John Boehner had the best of intentions in trying to work with the President on finding common ground.  However, Boehner was in  a "no-win" situation from the outset.  He was trying to find common ground with someone who clearly had little interest in finding common ground.  He never should have been negotiating in private with Obama.  This undermined his credibility with his own members.  He should have put all his efforts into putting together a package that would pass the House and could be sent to the Senate.

People are tired of back room deals that are driven by special interests.  The Republicans should start to build a new brand on three fundamental pillars-straight talk, no back room deals and shared sacrifice.

That would be a nice New Year's resolution to make when you are six feet underwater after going over the cliff.  I will some other ideas that build on this framework in my next post.