(no subject)

My 2 cents on the averted government shutdown: Obama is probably a good thinker and communicator, but he's not a strong negotiator. He simply lacks the experience of a businessman (e.g. Bloomberg) or a governor (e.g. Clinton) or a congressional party leader (Boehner) to play the high-stakes game of give-and-take. The Democrats' congressional team is not that great either. Just the timing of the shutdown negotiations, right before the tax day, meant reduced sympathy for government workers played-up by anti-shutdown crowd. Boehner used the timing to his advantage and won. A $38B reduction in a $3T budget is not much numerically, but it's an indicator of the things to come. The Republicans will press ahead with their agenda and they will outnegotiate the Democrats. Most likely, it will not hurt Obama's chances for being re-elected in 2012, and, this is my hope, we'll end up with split government again: a Democratic President and a Republican Congress.