A Negotiating Primer for Obama: Three Simple Phrases To Repeat As Needed

A little Blondie, just because if it really mattered that a deal gets struck before the end of the year, this would be a good song for a post about the fiscal (non-)cliff.

Anyhow, those three phrases:

1) “Nothing’s agreed on until everything is agreed on.”

2) “Because we didn’t arrive at a deal, the concessions in my last offer are off the table. My original proposal is my only offer on the table at this time.”

3) “I await a concrete counterproposal from Congressional Republicans, listing specific spending cuts and tax hikes that a majority of their caucus is ready to vote for."

Saturday 12/29 Update: maybe Obama's absorbed the first two phrases, at least.  From TPM:

Obama announced that the fate of a potential deal lies with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who will work together to present a prospective package to their respective conferences over the weekend.

Should that effort fail, however, Obama indicated that he would call upon Reid to bring the original White House proposal -- extending Bush-era tax rates on income below $250,000, among other measures -- for an up-or-down vote in the Senate.

"We should let everybody vote, that's the way this is supposed to work," Obama said.

Obama's also going on Meet the Press tomorrow to make his case to the public.  Excellent.

Update, Sunday 12:09 am: a song for a Sunday.  It's all SC's fault for getting me started on a Blondie kick.

 

Comments

[Linkmeister]

It's semantics, but I'd reverse the items in #3. Tax hikes first, for emphasis.

(Paraphrasing Scrooge): What a wonderful list. A remarkable list!

[low-tech cyclist]

Linkmeister - Glad you like the list!

#1 is from James Baker of the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations, but my guess is that it has an ancient lineage going back at least through LBJ and Sam Rayburn. #2 is an immediate corollary (as we say in the math biz) of #1, but an important one: if you don't say #2 when needed, then it undermines #1.

On #3, I'm good with tax hikes going first. And it's got the corollary that if their proposal either isn't specific or if there's doubt that the GOP caucus is ready to support it, you've got to call them on it.

That should really be #4, but I couldn't come up with a sufficiently pithy way of saying it.

I think Obama would be a pretty good negotiator in a good-faith negotiation. But he really seems to suck at negotiating with bad actors like the Republicans in Congress. Even now, when he should have learned something from the ruins of the 2011 government shutdown and debt ceiling negotiations, he seems a good deal less than clueful.

Even his cutting his vacation short was a bad move IMHO, signaling too much eagerness to reach a deal. There are times when you have to simply walk away from the table until the other party clearly is ready to deal, and this is one of them.

[kathy a.]

everybody would suck at negotiations with people who say, "if you don't take my position 100%, i'm outta here, and i'll blame you." (with the n-word subtext as an added bonus here.)

[nancy]

#2 is the one the children will not be able to grasp. See Parenting 101. And I agree -- he shouldn't have cut his vacation short. They know how to reach him. Until then the House needed to stay in time out corner.

lt-c, your list one-ups our Alinsky co-opters. The President retains his dignity and the upper-hand, while the non-negotiators are free to demonstrate how badly they understand guerilla theatre. Hint: don't keep repeating threats that worked *last time*.

p.s. Christmas Badgers! :)

[kathy a.]

you know, he's avoiding the "we were here to work while the president was in hawaii playing golf" scenario. and i don't blame him for being the grownup and showing them up. house republicans, last i heard, have no plans to return to work. so you can see how serious they are.

it's all about # 3 -- put your proposal out, now, in detail we can discuss, or you can't complain.

[low-tech cyclist]

kathy - it's true that there's no 'getting to yes,' as the hackneyed phrase goes, if one party is only technically at the table, and would rather torpedo a deal than arrive at one. But I think it is possible to handle such sham negotiations in a way that yields no ground to bullshit pretenses of negotiation yet leaves the door open for the real thing, and as nancy says, keeps the dignity of the President and his office intact.

I don't think Obama's showing anyone up by hurrying back to DC when none of the other players are in town; I think he's just perplexing Joe and Jane Sixpack more than anything else, in addition to telegraphing to the GOP an overeagerness to reach a deal.

Sure, he should have been ready to head back to DC whenever the GOP principals did so they couldn't show him up, but I don't think there's a symmetrical advantage to his showing up first when it's just him alone, because a group of people, even all on the same side, can look like they're doing something. By himself, he can't.

nancy - I like the time-out analogy. (I guess I would, as the father of a 5 year old, but still.) And I agree with you that it's important for the President to maintain a dignified approach in things like this.

And glad you liked the Christmas badgers! Back in the pre-YouTube era, on LiveJournal one year I did an Advent calendar of flash animations; that was my Christmas Eve selection.

[kathy a.]

he's setting a good example, as we also say in the parenting business. or, "leading by example." and besides, there is probably a lot of other crap to deal with, getting the new term set up. also, the debt ceiling crisis rides again.

and he is escorting hawaii's new senator back on air force one. it would not surprise me if obama spends some of this time contacting newbies to congress -- the new session needs to start at a sprint, from his point of view.

[nancy]

Similarly:

Far more is at stake in Barack Obama’s decision on whether to nominate Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense than whether Chuck Hagel is nominated. What the president decides will bear on: his effectiveness in his second term; any president’s ability to form a government; whether an independent voice can be raised on a highly sensitive issue in opposition to the views of a powerful lobby and still be named to a significant government position; whether there is actually a proper nominating system; whether McCarthyite tactics can still be effective more than half a century after they were rejected by a fed-up nation.

Elizabeth Drew at NYRB. The Preemptive War on Hagel .

In Washington it’s quite simple to get someone labeled “controversial.” All it takes is an attack by a prominent person, followed up by similar arguments by allies; throw in a couple of senators whom the press loves because they make controversial statements—John McCain has been the reigning champ for years—and, voila! someone is seen to have “a lot of opposition.” In the absence of a statement of support by the president, some elected politicians hide under their desks. Before you knew it the word in Washington was that Hagel was controversial and his nomination faced strong opposition.

The press fed the narrative that the neocons wanted. Controversy is so much more fun than balance.

Italics are mine. Hope that brief vacation helped his Presidential resolve.

[low-tech cyclist]

nancy - at times Obama seems to have plenty of backbone, then at other times it seems to disappear. Backing down in the face of the baseless attacks on Susan Rice was bad enough. He can't afford to do it again. If he wants to convince anyone that he can't be pushed around, this is really his last chance.

[Crissa]

Even if the President say something, how often does the press remember he has said something?

The number of beltway pundit columns this last couple of years that chided Obama for not doing or saying something he had already said has been enlightening.

The bully pulpit no longer exists. And just because you (and I say this with the open-ended you, not a specific you) haven't heard it happen doesn't mean it didn't happen.

[low-tech cyclist]

All too true, Crissa. And this is the sort of thing they should be doing right in their sleep.

Being generally aware of what positions the President has taken on major issues, and being able to verify exactly what he has or hasn't said on a topic in recent years before writing a column about it (or hiring an intern to do this last bit for you), should be a minimum competency for being a national pundit.

You'd think, anyway.

I keep praying for the time to get here soon when TPM becomes a major player in the news-and-commentary biz. Once they break into the majors, Josh Marshall & Co. will eat everyone else's lunch.

[oddjob]

You'd think, anyway.

You would.

Given that the word 'pundit' comes from a Hindi word that roughly translates as 'master teacher', I often think we badly misuse the word when it comes to op-ed writers. Far too often the more accurate term is 'ignorant, verbose jackasses'.

[oddjob]

In a related vein:

Filibuster Reform Champions Say Democrats Have 51 Votes To Change Rules

[kathy a.]

re fillibuster: cool!

[kathy a.]

here we go: obama challenges the GOP leaders to a straight up or down majority vote on a stripped-back proposal (tax breaks up to $250,000). so, there.

miss mitch can fillibuster; boehner can refuse to hold a vote. their calls; but it will be on them.

[nancy]

Am getting the sense that Sir C is having a truly fine vacation. :) Hope so.

[low-tech cyclist]

I'm sure Sir Charles' radio silence is because he and his wife are having too good a time for him to bother with blogging. If we don't hear from him until he's in an airport on the homeward trip, that's all to the good.

I'll probably toss up a new open thread early tomorrow morning; thanks to the Blondie kick SC got me started on, I tripped across a great live version of "Sunday Girl" the other day which ought to go with a Sunday thread. Deborah Harry was really something awesome back then.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Look forward to the open thread as this wild year winds down, hopefully with no new surprises awaiting the last 59 hours and 59 minutes -- as I type this. It's been a fun house ride -- but like the one in Margaret St.Clair's "Horror Howce" -- sic, and one of the few truly frightening short stories I've ever read. The monsters are real, the scars and scratches draw real blood, and some of the passengers didn't survive.

And not just Trayvon Martin, Sandy Hook school children and Colorado moviegoers. There were anonymous victims all over, people who died because of assaults on the ACA, or on women's rights, or on unions or on the poor and the immigrants. And other types of victims as well. I don't know what picture Sandra Fluke or Susan Rice had of herself in five years, but whoever they turn out to be, the people in those pictures are gone forever.

And yet we survived the ride -- if we make these last hours -- we don't have President Romney, or an all-Republican controlled Congress, and the horrors are getting us to strike back against gun insanity, against Republican bigotry and misogyny, against the fillibuster and gridlock, and Republicanomical madness.

(It's been that sort of year for me as well, and I'll probably tell the story as well -- get your 'page down fingers' in practice -- including one period where I was literally wrong about everything, and Em -- legally disabled at least partially because of problems with responsibility -- had to handle a difficult negotiation basically on her own and against my sniping from the side-lines, and did a magnificent job and made the right decisions no matter how much I protested -- Okay, I came up with one suggestion at the end that everybody likes and that helped heal my wounded ego, but when our lawyer said I had a prodigious intellect -- not true, just a lot of knowledge and an average intellect -- she didn't know how bad my judgement had been.)

On other comments, maybe Sir Charles, who when we last heard from him was entering the gym, found the punching bags decorated with pictures of Will, Brooks, and Douthat and hasn't stopped swinging yet.

And Debbie Harry was incredible then, but ten years earlier, when she was one of the singers for WIND IN THE WILLOWS -- and was still a brunette -- not so good. I checked the YouTube copies of the cuts and my memory had been too kind,. They really did deserve the "Bummer of the Year" Award from Rolling Stone they received.

[kathy a.]

this was kind of a hell of a year, no?

glad the whatever worked out in the end, prup.

i frittered away a good bit of time after christmas, on a "guest column" in a local online paper. this anonymous person wrote that he carries concealed, and there'd be less gun violence if more people did. mmm mmm mmm. considering the topic, it stayed pretty civil, and was an interesting discussion -- but not a lot of support for this guy's view in my town. i like my town.

[kathy a.]

speaking of guns: sheriff joe plans to deploy his armed civilian "posse" to "guard" schools -- what could possibly go wrong? armed civilians; led by a racist; don't know the kids, teachers, parents; are looking for "criminal activity." yikes.

the *normal* state of things at your basic suburban middle or high school, at certain times of day, is pandemonium. i mean, they're kids; they have energy; there are lots of them. in many neighborhoods, both the kids and their parents fail to be lily-white. there's a lot of yelling -- often happy, sometimes angry, sometimes it is hard to tell.

he's talking about putting the posse "at the perimeters" of schools, not in them -- probably because he knows school administrations would not permit this on school grounds. but that makes the whole enterprise all the more dangerous. i hope the schools raise a huge stink; hope they can get an injunction. (schools really should not have to sue the sheriff to keep armed civilians away from the school. but i hope they do just that.)

via balloon juice.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

On guns, I was just checking an article on gun death rates. The next time a gun lover argues that it is liberals or whatever that are the cause of the gun violence, ask him why of the twenty states (not including DC) with the highest rate of gun deaths, the only one that could be considered even bluish purple is New Mexico, that all the rest are either solid Republican or reddish purple until you hit IN at 20 and CO and MD tied at 21. The bolttom ten are solidly Democratic or bluish Purple except Iowa at 41.

And NYC remains the safest city except for San Jose for gun deaths, and substantially lower than any other city for gun suicides. (The political profiles pof the cities don't match out as well politically, but NYC is still the safest big city around.)

[low-tech cyclist]

For the next round, one phrase for Obama to repeat as needed:

"The President cannot raise the debt ceiling. The President can only sign or veto legislation that Congress passes. I have requested a clean debt ceiling from Congress. There is nothing further for me to say until Congress votes on a debt ceiling extension."

Make the House Republicans put their cards on the table, for everyone to see.

[Sir Charles]

Jim,

Happy New Year. The other thing about gun deaths is the impact of jurisdictions around you. For years, DC had strict gun laws that were completely undermined by bordering on Virginia, which basically had zero controls on gun purchases.

l-t c,

I think we once again get a chance to see how crazy the House Republicans are -- and with them, I never bet against the crazy.