Math and Presidential Leadership
In his interview with Bloomberg yesterday, the President claimed his insistence on tax increases for job creators as a precondition for further talks related to the fiscal cliff was not rooted in him “being stubborn” or “being partisan. It’s just a matter of math.” That’s interesting, because someone gave an interesting math lesson making the exact opposite point – that the unsustainable arithmetic behind our nation’s entitlement spending will ultimately make a discussion of tax levels irrelevant:
If you look at the numbers, then Medicare in particular will run out of money and we will not be able to sustain that program no matter how much taxes go up. I mean, it’s not an option for us to just sit by and do nothing.
The speaker? Barack Obama, at a news conference last July. But when yesterday’s Bloomberg interview turned toward specific entitlement cuts he was prepared to endorse, the President ducked the questions, merely saying “I am willing to look” at various proposals. But he wasn’t, and isn’t, prepared to lead himself – despite his own lectures about “math,” and his public admission that raising taxes cannot control skyrocketing entitlement spending.
Some would argue that leadership involves having the courage to speak uncomfortable truths, and make hard choices. Pandering to “soak the rich” rhetoric – and insisting on tax increases that the President has publicly admitted won’t solve the deficit problem – qualifies on neither count. It’s yet another illustration of the fact that Washington doesn’t just have a spending problem – although it does have that in spades. It also has a leadership problem, from a President more interested in scoring cheap political points than solving our nation’s entitlement crisis.