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Like Krugman yesterday, NYT’s Joe Nocera gets it right:
Obama should have played the 14th Amendment card, using its language about “the validity of the public debt” to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling. Yes, he would have infuriated the Republicans, but so what? They already view him as the Antichrist. Legal scholars believe that Congress would not have been able to sue to overturn his decision. Inexplicably, he chose instead a course of action that maximized the leverage of the Republican extremists.
I just don’t understand why he didn’t make it clear nine months ago that he’d use all available legal powers of his office to keep the anti-government right from hijacking fiscal policy — and the entire national political conversation as well. We’ve got real problems to deal with — we need massive investment in building the industries and labor force that the country will need to compete globally in the decades ahead. Instead, this bullshit has owned the headlines for more than a year.
He got pwned. And he’s finished, looks to me. Sad, for all of us.
