I pretty much agree with Matt Yglesias’s take on the debt ceiling situation. Democrats played their cards poorly:

Back last December when Democrats had a much stronger hand in Congress, they reached a deal with the GOP over tax cut extension and some additional stimulus. Since those measures all increased the deficit, many of us thought at the time that including an increase in the debt ceiling would be a smart idea. For one thing, if Congress wills an increase in debt, it ought to also will an increase in the government’s borrowing authority. For another thing, such an increase would minimize the GOP’s ability to launch a new round of hostage-taking.

It didn’t happen. Obama said he trusted John Boehner. Harry Reid said he didn’t want the debt limit to be raised by the 111th Congress because he wanted to force the incoming 112th Congress to take ownership over it. The results of these decisions have been a disaster.

That last part is premature, though it might well turn out to be correct. This actually gets to what I think is a pretty fair criticism of Obama’s governing strategy as president. He does have one, and I think it hews pretty close to the rhetoric he used so often during the 2008 campaign. Come on, you know the drill: there’s more that unites us that divides us, people can disagree while working toward the common good, we need more engagement than the cheap politics of personal attacks gives us. And so on. It’s a pitch-perfect message to Democrats and independents, and it has some truth to it. Obama has governed that way, more or less, and I think he deeply believes it. After all, it was his profession: getting people who disagree to come together for the common good, regardless of their differences. His book Dreams From My Father describes what he did at some length, and he pretty clearly thought he could do that as president, and that that would change Washington. It was worth a try at least.

But it really hasn’t worked out. I think the reason that Obama has not seriously resisted negotiations over the debt ceiling–if not encouraged them through his statements and actions–is that picking a fight over a clean bill probably would have required using the Plan B that the Administration has never really had when dealing with intransigent Republicans. I think Obama’s probably right in his strategy when it comes to individuals. You talk to normal Republicans, you find that most aren’t entirely orthodox in terms of conservative ideology, and even though they’ll give the expected bromides about Big Government, few want to give up clean water or Social Security. The problem is that institutions aren’t like people, and in particular with modern conservatism what you have is a bunch of dogma instead of real ideas. How can you tell? Over the past thirty years, the issue positions of the Democratic Party have changed significantly. Some for the good, some not so much for the good, but in general the changes have been due to different ideas being debated within the party. Think Bill Clinton taking on the protectionists on trade, or the history of the health care issue moving from single-payer to some combination of Medicare, Medicaid, and a regulated individual market. The Democratic Party will change over time, as certain ideas get displaced and others gain ascendance. The process never completely ends–there are still many protectionists out there–but it does largely happen. It almost never happens with Republicans. They’ve been anti-union, anti-choice, and anti-tax for decades, among other things and to the extent their stances on these issues have changed, it’s only to become more extreme. This is different from Democrats, who may keep the same general goals but are willing to change on things like trade on the basis that it’s a better deal economically, if not for everyone in the country. Republicanism is dogmatism, which as has been said is not the absence of thought, but the end of thought. That can’t be bargained with. And the engagement strategy, with the hopes of either getting agreement or exposing the other side as intransigent fools, only works with a press that’s committed to calling the shots fairly. Which we also do not have.

Then again, going postal on the Republicans as the bloggy left would have him do all the time just doesn’t have much of a track record of success. The times Obama has tried this have not worked out so well. I just think Harry Reid was clearly not thinking about the whole “buy-in” thing, that was silly. Voters have never punished politicians for raising the debt limit, it’s not the sort of issue that penetrates that way. It’s a second-order “spending” issue adjunct at best. But Congressional Democrats were clearly using the horse sense that served them so well during the debate over voting on the Bush Tax Cuts, and did not want to just fucking take responsibility. Maybe this situation was just unavoidable. But given Reid’s choice, I can see why Obama didn’t oppose the negotiations. He still sees the opportunity to do all the dealmaking and consensus stuff that he always wanted to do. I think we might just have to get used to him not passing up any opportunity to do that.