Obama Must Fight

In the fight over tax breaks, the Republicans have left the president demoralized. In the fight over whether the tax cuts from George W. Bush’s presidency should be only for people in the U.S. with incomes under $250,000 a year, or whether they should also be extended to the richest of the land, the Republicans are playing hard ball: They will block all laws, including a tax cut that doesn’t include everyone, explained designated House Majority Leader John Boehner. He dismissed the majority vote in the “old” House of Representatives for a limited tax cut as “chicken crap” and “nonsense.”

And how does President Barack Obama react to this mixture of humiliation and political blackmail? The U.S. president sends a peace offering, in which he freezes the salaries of all federal government employees and clarifies that he is ready to compromise, only so that the unemployment benefits don’t run out. Most observers expect that Obama will soon bow to the demands, and extend the tax cuts for millionaires for years — perhaps forever.

Obama’s hesitant actions — The New York Times columnist Frank Rich describes these as “Stockholm-Syndrome” reactions to his political hostage-takers — are disturbing for three reasons:

First, the extension would be a political and economic disaster. The U.S. expects record deficits in the coming year that cannot be tamed through savings alone. Who — when not the rich and super rich, who from the political economies of the past decades have profited more than the average income people — should pay the bill? If there is a country in which the wealth tax is acceptable, then the U.S. is it.

Second, the White House’s handling of this is, tactically speaking, awkward. The Democrats, in the question of tax cuts, have the majority of Americans on their side and could portray the Republicans as the patronage party that puts the country’s future at risk for the rich promoters. When Obama doesn’t use the split in government power from the beginning, then one must ask: How he will ever oppose the brutal tactics of the Republicans to win the 2012 elections?

And, finally, one must question Obama’s leadership qualities, as many of his followers are doing. Pragmatism is one thing. But who, when up against an aggressive opponent in a foreign country, doesn’t show a backbone? Who trusts him to stand up, in a war of nerves, against Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-Il or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

Democrats in Congress support a move to lower middle class taxes with their vote, but without Obama’s support it won’t succeed in creating the message with which they could apply political pressure on the Republicans: that their “all or nothing” position would have consequences when on Jan. 1, 2011, taxes increase for all Americans.

Standing against opposition shows the quality of a politician. If Obama isn’t ready for a moment this difficult, one where he would need to fight for his cause, then he loses what the majority of people in his country feel he is entitled to: respect.