Une analyse assez synthétique et intéressante dans The New Republic, sous la plume de Jonathan Cohn, qui s'en prend lui aussi à Barack Obama, il juge que le résultat, apparemment calamiteux pour les Démocrates, de la crise du plafond de la dette américaine est dû à un manque de leadership de la part du Président. Leadership, à lire son papier je dirai plutôt qu'il aurait manqué d'autorité.
Après avoir brièvement analysé les conséquences néfastes du deal d'hier (adopté à la Chambre des Représentants et qui va être voté incessamment par le Sénat), Cohn adresse ses reproches au Président :
Is Obama to blame? I’ve been among his staunchest defenders in situations like these. I know it's easier to second-guess these decisions from the cheap seats. I realize the country is more conservative than I am. I appreciate the difficulty of fighting Fox News, the Koch brothers, and the filibuster all at once. […] Obama was up against those same forces in the debt ceiling debate. But this time, I think, it's impossible not to second-guess his decisions. Why didn't he demand Republicans raise the debt limit, the way Congress has routinely for previous presidents, and stand by that when Republicans inevitably refused? Why didn't he spend more time criticizing Republicans for their values and priorities rather than trying to find accommodations with them? Why didn't he play up the possibility of the 14th Amendment, if only to increase his leverage? Imagine if the president had, from the very beginning, laid out a few key principles and stuck to them: No tying the debt ceiling to deficit reduction; no attacks on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security; no deficit reduction without higher taxes on the riche.
Au passage il remarque que le deal n'est tout de même pas si mauvais puisqu'il ne sera renégocié qu'en 2013 et qu'entretemps les allègement d'impôts décidés pendant l'administration Bush prendront fin (à fin 2012), permettant des rentrées d'argent supplémentaires et pas seulement des coupes budgétaires (ce que remarquait hier aussi Nate Silver)
Il analyse parfaitement la stratégie présidentielle qui est de ménager les indépendants et les modérés et de rejeter le parti Républicain à l'extrême droite.
Et pour finir par se radoucir vis à vis du Président :
Unlike some of my friends, I don't believe Obama adopted this approach primarily because he thought it would improve his prospects for re-election. As I have written previously, I give the president a lot more credit than that, morally and intellectually. My guess is that he pursued this strategy because he didn't want to poison the atmosphere for negotiations and believed (genuinely, accurately) that moderate entitlement cuts should be part of a balanced deficit reduction agreement. But the atmosphere was poisoned from the start and Republicans were never going to support a balanced agreement. He was trying to do the right thing when it was not possible to do the right thing. It may not have made for bad politics, but it certainly made for bad policy.