| Morning Jolt – November 29, 2012 By Jim Geraghty Here's your Morning Jolt. Enjoy. Jim Obama Deals With the Fiscal Cliff with the Only Tool He Knows: Campaign Rallies In light of this . . . President Barack Obama plans to make a public case this week for his strategy for dealing with the looming fiscal cliff, traveling to the Philadelphia suburbs Friday as he pressures Republicans to allow tax increases on the wealthy while extending tax cuts for families earning $250,000 or less. The White House said Tuesday that the president intends to hold a series of events to build support for his approach to avoid across-the-board tax increases and steep spending cuts in defense and domestic programs. Obama will meet with small business owners at the White House on Tuesday and with middle-class families on Wednesday. The president will visit the Rodon Group on 2800 Sterling Drive in Hatfield. The president's visit will cap a week of public outreach as the White House and congressional leaders negotiate a way to avoid the tax increases and spending cuts scheduled to take effect Jan. 1. The trip will mark Obama's first public event outside the nation's capital since winning re-election. . . . I'm not sure Obama really understands negotiating. So, for the sake of argument, let's assume that Obama's rallies for the "balanced approach" – a.k.a. tax hikes, defense cuts, and the slightest of deck-chair rearrangement on entitlements – are a phenomenal success. Let's assume he gets a decent number of tuned-in Americans, beyond his usual diehard supporters, to call in to Congress. Let's assume that those folks don't live in districts with House Democrats who are already aligned with the president's view on this. (Notice that Obama is attempting to sway House Republicans by heading to a district represented by a Democrat, Representative Allyson Schwartz.) Those Obama fans will be calling the offices of House Republicans who are: - Safely reelected in a year when President Obama won nearly 65 million votes nationwide, thus looking pretty darn safe for a low-turnout midterm election in 2014, and thus unlikely to lose their seats anytime in the next few cycles.
- Defeated in this year's elections, and thus free to vote however they like, not caring what those constituents are demanding.
- Retiring, and thus free to vote however they like, not caring what those constituents are demanding.
Obama doesn't seem to realize that the time he had leverage with the House Republicans was before these elections, when they might have felt some pressure to "get something done" and demonstrate that they can tackle tough problems like debt and entitlements. President Obama now has much, much less leverage than he did before the elections, and all of the rallies in the world aren't going to change that. What is Obama going to do – denounce Republicans for not acquiescing to his agenda? He's been doing that for four years. What, is he going to put the GOP brand in the toilet? It's already there! If you're a House Republican, what incentive do you have to give ground on tax increases that you think will be damaging to the country? The only significant one is the conclusion that going over the fiscal cliff will inflict worse damage on the economy. And that's a pretty big one, but it may or may not be worth violating the Grover Norquist pledge, infuriating the base, and giving a diehard, no-holds-barred opponent in the White House exactly what he wants. Here's Keith Hennessey, arguing that economic reality will force Obama to accept a deal much less to his liking than he's letting on: If there is no bill, the U.S. economy will probably dip into recession for much/most/all of 2013, and it's impossible to predict whether such a recession would be short-lived. A 2013 recession would be terrible for the country and terrible for the Obama Presidency. It would limit the President's options across his entire policy agenda, economic and non-economic. And it could define and dominate his entire second term. President Obama believes #1 and #2, and therefore avoiding the risk of triggering a recession with his veto is an even higher policy priority than his fiscal policy goal. The President wants to get things done. He cares more about his own chances for policy success (across the entire breadth of his agenda, whenever he figures out what it is) than he cares about relative political blame. A scenario in which Republicans get most of the blame for a veto-triggered recession is still a loser for him if it means he can't accomplish his second term goals. Here's Erskine Bowles, arguing we have a two-in-three chance of going over the cliff: Erskine Bowles, co-chairman of the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles commission assembled by the White House to deal with the national debt, said he believes that there's only a one-in-three probability that Congress will reach an agreement on the so-called fiscal cliff before the Dec. 31 deadline. "We have a real crisis, and I think it would be insane to reach the fiscal cliff, but I think that there's only a one-third probability of Congress getting something done before Dec. 31," Bowles said. "You all know what it means if we don't, if we go over the cliff — I think you'll see economic growth slowed by as much as 3 to 5 percent. That's obviously enough to put us back into a recession." Bowles was a bit more upbeat about the chances for a deal after the deadline passes. "I'm certain we'll get it done in the lame duck" session of Congress, he said. "I think it's about one third that we'll go over the cliff and people will come to their senses pretty quickly. But I think the real problem is if we go over the cliff and we don't do anything immediately, and that's also a one-third probability." Ed Morrissey looks at a new Washington Post poll on Americans' views of dealing with the fiscal cliff, and is left groaning at the scope and scale of the denial: The only broad consensus for action is the populist tax-hike option which will solve less than 10% of the problem, and two-thirds won't even take a basic step like mildly indexing retirement eligibility to life expectancy in order to reduce costs in the biggest fiscal train wreck of the federal budget. If we could trade marginal tax-rate increases for real cuts in spending and actual entitlement reform that would end the long-term problems in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, I'd take that trade, if somewhat reluctantly. This poll shows that Americans still have not come to grips with the scope and size of the problem … or even basic math. I heard this anecdote from Jonah, and Marc Thiessen summarizes it: "After he was defeated for re-election in 1989, New York Mayor Ed Koch was asked if he would ever run for office again. "No," Koch replied. "The people have spoken . . . and they must be punished." Look, America, this year, you knew which candidate was the candidate of bigger government and higher taxes and which candidate was the candidate of smaller government and lower taxes. You voted for the tax-hike guy. Now all of our taxes will go up in January, because Republicans refuse to play along with the charade that our fiscal house can be put in order just by taxing "the rich." Think of the coming double-dip recession as a grand, national teachable moment. It's That Time of Year Again Set off by the sight of a Hanukkah-themed gingerbread house, Commentary's Bethany Mandel laments the degree to which Hanukkah is treated as a "Jewish Christmas" instead of a separate holiday, and one that is in fact relatively minor in the Jewish religious calendar. Her Tweets, in paragraph form: The irony is, the story of Hanukkah is one of fighting assimilation . . . Hanukkah does not equal 'Jewish Christmas.' Those that treat it as such do the story of Hanukkah a great disservice. Hanukkah isn't a big deal. It's not even in the Torah . . . This is Christmas season. This is not my holiday season. Christians don't insist I say 'Happy Holidays' during Rosh Hashanah . . . I'm not saying Hanukkah is worthless. I'm saying that it doesn't deserve the prominence it has in American culture. It has that prominence because of Christmas . . . I can see folks insisting on people saying "Happy Holidays" during Easter/Passover. They fall at the same time & are quite significant. But "happy holidays" in December? No, it's not my holiday season. It's Christmas. You don't have to say "Happy Hanukkah" the whole month . . . Okay, an addendum: I'm a giant hypocrite because my Hanukkah card said 'Happy Holidays.' A Jewish friend in an interfaith marriage recently lamented that there isn't really any way for the Jewish end of the holiday season to keep up with the all-encompassing cultural steamroller that is Christmas. There are no cheesy Hallmark movies with television stars from a decade ago about "the true meaning of Hanukkah." Maybe you'll get one animated Hanukkah special per year if you're lucky. There is no National Lampoon Hanukkah movie with Clark Griswold accidentally setting the house on fire by knocking over the menorah. Dozens of commercials use some variation of Santa visiting and leaving their featured products under the tree. (Then again, if the result of this disparity is that the public is spared efforts like this Hanukkah-themed commercial for Snuggies, maybe this is a blessing, my Jewish friends. Haven't you suffered enough?) Not only is the selection of Hanukkah children's books comparably sparse, my friend finds most of them are awkward attempts to shoehorn a tale of Maccabean revolt and relatively simple practices – "Hey, look, kids, it's a four-sided top!" - into a tone of jolly-ness and grandeur on par with Christmas. Then again, our culture can turn any holiday inside out through popular practice – we celebrate the resurrection of Christ with chocolate eggs and anthropomorphic bunnies. Everyone will handle these issues differently, but I know precisely how I would deal with a gingerbread house that I found to be an unnerving symbol of a watered-down cultural practice or an eroding subculture: I would strike a blow for authenticity and cultural distinctiveness by, er . . . eating it. Perhaps the Best, and Most Forgotten, Saturday Night Live Sketch of All Time There's been a lot of "the Right needs to start winning the battle in the realm of culture, not politics" discussion – with a slightly less clear sense of how, precisely, to do that. Lee Habeeb and Mike Leven want the Right to develop its own "Don Hewitt, NPR, Daily Show, Ellen DeGeneres Show, 60 Minutes, Frontline, Oliver Stone, and Charlie Rose." Okay . . . let's do that. Where do we start? I wouldn't pretend to have all the answers, but I think I came across a brilliant example from the Saturday Night Live archives. After the Brady Bill passed, actor and National Rifle Association Charleton Heston went on SNL and did a faux-sales pitch for the "National Rifle Association Loaner program." It's funny and quite astounding, as Heston is playing with the liberals' stereotype of the NRA as reckless lunatics who will happily put firearms in the hands of just about anyone: "That's right, we will loan you a handgun for five business days while the authorities conduct their background checks." He even makes a "Saturday Night Special" pun. But it's the closing line that kills: "You may be asking yourself, 'is this legal'? Well, they have the Brady Bill; we have the Bill of Rights. So come on down." It's a perfect combination that may be tough to replicate (Tom Selleck is on the NRA's Board of Directors, but is less overt in his political activism): a beloved actor, a zany concept, a serious conservative point in the middle of the laughs (criminals don't wait five days to get a gun, so why should you, the law-abiding citizen?) and a popular non-conservative venue willing to spotlight the whole idea in the name of comedy. By the way, earlier this week I showed the sketch to my friend Cam Edwards, of NRANews.com, and he said he had never seen it. ADDENDUM: Our Dan Foster: "The fact that both parties have at various times desperately wanted to get rid of the filibuster IS THE CHIEF THING RECOMMENDING IT." To read more, visit www.nationalreview.com Save 75% . . . Subscribe to National Review magazine today and get 75% off the newsstand price. Click here for print-edition information. Click here for digital-edition information. And National Review makes a great gift. Click here to send a full-year gift to NR Digital, and here to send a full-year subscription to the print edition. Conservatives – stay healthy! Get plenty of Vitamin Sea on the next National Review cruise. Visit www.nrcruise.com for complete information about our next trip. National Review, Inc. | 
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