Obama’s Triumph, Obama’s Failure

America has avoided a descent into debt chaos — but is this a victory for Barack Obama? The U.S. president was not the main person responsible for the week-long dispute, but he did surprisingly little to resolve it. Obama has won the public relations game of guilt and innocence — but he has not met his responsibilities as president.

When the Titanic hit the iceberg, the captain was not on the bridge. Edward Smith was asleep. The captain proved himself to be useless before and after the collision. Firstly, he let his ship sail through the cold North Atlantic at full steam. During the sinking his only noteworthy contribution to rescuing his passengers was sending the distress call out into the night.

Now, Barack Obama is not the main person responsible for the drama in Washington, but some of the blame for the U.S. ship-of-state finding itself in a state of emergency does lie with the president. Through overnight unification, America has narrowly avoided hitting the debt limit and thus going bankrupt. But the catastrophe is thereby only postponed; the U.S. has only circumnavigated one of many icebergs by a hair’s breadth.

Until now, Obama has been lucky his opponents float so well and that his mistakes did not stand out more. It is easy to be the sensible, calm statesman when pig-headed, self-righteous nihilists like the tea party legislators are involved. It is easy to refuse all negotiation when the other side acts like a crazy blackmail gang. Obama played the PR game of guilt and innocence very cleverly. As a result, he wins the polls by a mile — but that is not the most important job of the president.

A Show Instead of Leadership

Obama must govern America. He, not some crazed backbencher, holds responsibility for making sure the country functions. From his point of view, it is unfortunate that the Constitution gives Congress the exclusive right to distribute or withhold money from the government. But it’s been that way since 1788 and is not going to change any time soon.

The president did not maneuver the country into the dangerous waters in which it now floats. He has, however, done surprisingly little to impede the journey to disaster and the collapse of the whole political dialogue in Washington. In the last few weeks, during which the fight for the budget and debt limit has gotten steadily out of hand, we have heard Obama mention two things more than anything else: The promise that he will never, ever negotiate and the insulting descriptions of his political opponents.

They may have been factually correct statements, but they did not agree with a solution. Obama did not want to stoop to having serious talks with the Republicans, not even to allow one or another concession. All meetings in the White House, all telephone calls with Republican leaders: a show.

Obama wanted the fight, and he wanted the complete capitulation of his opponents, but no unification. You can also say it like this: Captain Obama saw the iceberg on the horizon. He set out for the bridge and left a horde of incompetent firemen at the helm. After the collision is when he would have sent out the SOS.