Why Obama Is Not Like Bush

Jonathan Chait: “The conventional wisdom – propounded by many of the same pundits now equating Obama with Bush – held that Obama’s hardball tactics would backfire. Obama needed to negotiate over the debt ceiling, and didn’t dare change the Senate’s rules… To fail to placate conservatives would only enrage them more. This analysis turned out to have it backward. Congress managed to pass a budget for the first time in three years precisely because Obama
defeated the GOP’s extortion tactics, forcing Republicans to actually trade policy concessions rather than demand a ransom.”

“The prospects for Obama’s second term remain constricted. Not many deals beckon in Congress. The Obamacare rollout was surely a political disaster, but the administration has three more years to get the law up and running. By the end of 2005, George W. Bush had seen the promise of his presidency collapse from justifiably lofty heights. At the end of 2013, Obama stands at just about the same place he began his term.”