Keith Koffler over at the invaluable White House Dossier writes:
The massive spending cuts and tax increases set to kick in January 2 will cause a second recession, from which we may not emerge for many months. The economy may not really get going for years. Obama will have presided over two terms of economic disaster. It will ruin his legacy, and sow the seeds for a major Republican revival.
Republican revival? But the Republicans are going to get blamed, you say.
They will, in the short run. But in the end, it will be the president who failed to somehow make a deal. Presidents are ultimately responsible for their presidencies. The good ones tame their enemies, pick off some of them and make them allies, and get a good result. The bad ones go over fiscal cliffs.
The history books will say that Obama had to deal with a recalcitrant Congress. That will be the second thing school kids learn. But the first thing they will learn is that Obama sucked.
Do you doubt that, during the historical debacle that was the Carter Administration, the media wasn’t working in some way to lay the blame on conservatives and Republicans who wouldn’t go along with this or that? Do you doubt that, during the Carter years, the media didn’t do everything in its power to convince the public it wasn’t all Jimmy’s fault?
In the end, though, Koffler is correct. No one remembers what anyone else was doing or how they were behaving during Carter’s failed presidency. In the end, it was his record and his failure.
Which is at it should be.
Though you and I probably won’t live long enough to see a truly objective and definitive history of the Obama presidency get written, the best Obama will likely receive is, “It wasn”t his fault.”
No one wants that.
Republicans need to understand that and hold firm.
*this story is part of the Big Journalism Live Blog, which you can bookmark here.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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