The tantrum in a high chair
By Wesley Pruden
PrudenPolitics.com
Every mom who has ever been at her wit’s end
recognizes Barack Obama. The president who earlier
nagged Congress that it was time for Americans to
“eat our peas” finally threw his own peas to the
floor and banged his spoon on his supper dish. Such
a tantrum in a high chair is a familiar sight in a
lot of kitchens.
“Enough is enough,” the president cried, frustrated
by the tense budget talks at the White House. “Don’t
call my bluff,” he told his Republican tormentors.
“I’m going to the American people.”
If a pout and a sulk is familiar to Mom, every
2-year-old in town can understand the president’s
angry frustration. Throwing your peas on the floor,
particularly if they’re of the English variety,
tasting of copy paper and sliding down a tiny throat
like unlubricated ball bearings, is the instant
gratification every tantrum-thrower yearns for. But
it’s a presidential strategy we haven’t seen before.
These are not the cheers and hosannas the prince of
Hyde Park imagined for himself when he agreed to
step down from on high to assume the presidential
purple. It’s going on three years and the natives
are restless. They keep asking impertinent
questions. Rep. Eric Cantor, the leader of the
Republican House majority, ignited the president’s
ire when he suggested the president and the
Democrats take a smaller budget deal than His
Excellency wants. The president—“he got very
agitated,” in the telling of Mr. Cantor, who was
there—did not appreciate such lack of respect for
royalty.
Harry Reid, the president’s liege man in the Senate,
wanted to boot Mr. Cantor from the talks. “He
shouldn’t even be at the table,” the majority leader
said. No tea and cookies for him. Some Democrats
disputed the details in the Republican account, but
there was general agreement that Mr. Obama lost his
celebrated cool. And why not? So far the budget
talks have been a classic standoff between the
president, who is determined to raise taxes to make
the welfare state grow, and the Republicans, who are
determined to cut the bipartisan spending that
threatens to spin the economy into an abyss of
unknown depth.
The president’s tantrum can have a positive effect,
however, if it captures the full attention of the
public. Talk of the economy makes the average
voter’s head hurt, his teeth itch, and his Jockey
shorts bunch up under his belt. The economy has
always been like algebra, difficult to grasp, and
voters have been willing to leave the algebra to the
advocates for the tax-eaters. That may be changing,
as one and all begin to recognize that the good life
is at risk—the car, the boat, college for the kids,
tropical vacations in Maui. The exceptional nation
may be at risk of becoming like the toy nations of
Europe.
President Obama plays the empty threat to withhold
Grandma’s Social Security check. Ben S. Bernanke,
chairman of the Federal Reserve, warns of “a huge
financial calamity” if Congress refuses to raise the
debt limit. This echoes the lamentations of Treasury
Secretary Tim Geithner as well as the new chairman
of the International Monetary Fund. Moody’s, the
financial service that measures such things, piles
on, with the dire threat that U.S. bonds could be
downgraded. Maybe. It all smells like a contrived
campaign to put pressure on the Republicans to cave,
just as they have the attention of the president and
his frightened Democrats.
The scheme of Sen. Mitch McConnell, the leader of
the Republicans in the Senate, to give the president
the authority to raise the debt limit without
serious cuts and bear the consequences, looks better
to the Republicans than it did when he introduced it
and for his trouble was scorched by some
conservatives as the usual Republican sell-out
artist. Democrats squealed like stuck pigs. They
naturally don’t want this responsibility because
they understand the eventual consequences of
continuing to live it up like pigs in the slophouse.
Mr. Obama wants Republicans to share the “credit”
for his incompetent management of the economy.
The verdict of history, though on the way, is not
quite at hand. The verdict of 2012 soon will be, and
looms over everything. It’s enough to make a
president, swaddled with a bad situation he made
much worse, bang his supper dish with his spoon and
throw his peas on the floor.