gut;833851 wrote:All I can say is, if you think Obama has any chance of getting re-elected, you better put all your money in cash (and probably not the USD kind) a few weeks before the election.
He has a chance. I never underestimate the American people's ability to foul up a critical election, not to mention a liberal media already in cheerleader mode.
This is why talks are stalling a few weeks before default. The President of the United States is behaving like an adolescent.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/272060/paul-ryan-prepares-robert-costa
Ryan, who was elected to Congress in 1998, says Obama is a stark contrast to former president Bill Clinton, who often disagreed with House Republicans but for the most part respectfully engaged with lawmakers. Obama, he says, could learn a couple of things from Clinton, who knew how to negotiate in a divided government. “I was pretty new when Clinton was president,” Ryan says. “But I learned then that presidents serve themselves well when they say the same thing in public as they do in private, dealing with congressional leaders earnestly and honestly.”
“[Obama] has made it harder to establish trust, which will make it harder to find compromise,” Ryan says. “As much as he wants to come off as a leader, every time he talks about Republicans holding out to save fat-cat corporate-jet loopholes — which he knows is false — or leaks alleged spending cuts to the press, he reduces his leadership. He knows how that damages his credibility up here. Yet he continues to spin.”
Indeed, in almost every sense, Ryan says, Obama has been “fundamentally un-presidential” throughout the summer, “dragging his feet, failing to address the looming debt crisis — which he knows is coming — because he remains committed to his ideology.”
“This is, unfortunately, the way he operates,” Ryan says. “This is his pattern of behavior, this is his personality. For the next 18 months, it will probably be like this. It’ll be in-your-face class warfare, with bitter appeals to envy, fear, and anxiety, plus the demonization of the other side’s motives.”
Ryan, usually a happy warrior on fiscal matters, sounds resigned when asked whether he can help Republicans craft a long-term deal with the president to reduce the debt. Obama, he says, has made such a scenario near impossible. He cites Obama’s remarks to CBS News last week, when he said he could not guarantee Social Security payments, as well as the president’s “very personal” criticism of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor at the White House, as examples of the president’s inability to “discuss these issues in good faith.”
“Whenever I hear him speak now, I just shake my head and think, there he goes again,” Ryan says. “When it comes to actually governing, leading and fixing fiscal problems, he is not in the game.” He predicts that, with their votes this week, House Republicans will show that they are.
