Bruce Bartlett Analyzes Obama

His conclusion: Obama does not have any experience with tough negotiations.

He sees Obama time after time trying to compromise with Republicans who view each concession as merely a confirmation that they should be demanding more. Inevitably Obama caves to the Republican position.

Here is the key bit from the article in The Fiscal Times:

Unfortunately, Obama is really too young to have the kind of experience that previous presidents like Reagan brought to the White House in terms of understanding intransigent enemies and how to deal with them. Consequently, Obama has really been caught flat-footed by the Tea Party era Republican Party. He believed it would respond positively if he offered it half a loaf on just about every issue.

For example, some 40 percent of the 2009 stimulus legislation consisted of tax cuts even though his economic advisers knew that they would have almost no stimulative effect. But Obama viewed them as an important concession to Republicans. Yet despite total rejection of his stimulus package by the GOP, Obama kept the tax cuts rather than reprogramming the money into more effective programs such as state aid or public works.
We are in the midst of a debt crisis that
stems largely from Obama’s inability to accept
the intransigence of his political opponents.


Nevertheless, Obama offered Republicans another half-loaf by putting forward a health reform plan almost identical to those that they and conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation had proposed in the 1990s. Obama’s offer was summarily rejected and Republicans suddenly decided that the individual mandate, which previously had been at the core of their own health reform plans, was unconstitutional.

Now we are in the midst of a debt crisis that stems largely from Obama’s inability to accept the intransigence of his political opponents. Last December, he caved in to Republicans by supporting extension of the Bush tax cuts even though there is no evidence that they have done anything other than increase the deficit. There were those who told Obama that he ought to include an increase in the debt limit, but he rejected that idea, believing that Republicans would behave like responsible adults and raise the debt limit just as they did routinely when their party held the White House.

This incompetence by Obama would be bearable if he showed some ability to "learn on the job". But Obama keeps repeating the same mistake. He is hopeless. He really should be running with the rest of the pack of Republican hopefuls and not as a candidate for the Democrats.