The supercommittee was always a contrived solution to a contrived crisis, and President Obama was smart politically to stay away from it.
The current morass is not
like August, Obama pointed out, when a congressional impasse took the
country to the brink of default. Congress has a year to shape the cuts
that will otherwise kick in automatically, and polls suggest that voters
are receptive to the president’s argument that Republicans are standing
in the way of policies that could help jump-start the economy and
create jobs.
Much of Obama’s success will depend
on his ability to frame the election-year debate in a way that keeps
the moral high ground as he punches away at the “do-nothing” Congress.
Harry Truman saved his presidency in 1948 by running against a
Republican Congress with as much fervor as he did his GOP opponent.
Truman said if you can’t make them see the light, make them feel the
heat, a sentiment Obama is attempting to apply to today’s Congress.
With Republicans unilaterally
blocking his much-touted jobs package, Obama is looking for chinks in
the GOP armor. Will the party of tax cuts refuse to extend a payroll tax
cut for working families and an extension of unemployment benefits in
the worst economy the nation has seen in decades? Watch Senate leader
Mitch McConnell, says Norm Ornstein, a congressional scholar with the
American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank. “They’re not
going to shift unless and until Mitch McConnell decides it’s in their
political interest to do so,” he says.
Eleanor Clift 
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