Carlson: Obama and Boehner both lose

Margaret Carlson writes for Bloomberg View.

The credit rating on U.S. bonds may survive the debt-ceiling fiasco, but the president and speaker of the House, the two most powerful figures in American government, have already been downgraded.

Both leaders are trying to govern in a world that doesn't exist. Barack Obama, who came to the White House as a unifying force at a perilous moment, is the sole occupant of the post-partisan utopia he conjured as a candidate. He loves the center the way a kid loves ice cream. Too bad the center no longer exists in Washington, where the Republican opposition is openly determined to destroy his presidency.

By announcing his final position at the outset of debt negotiations, Obama thought he would compel the other side to reward him for his candor and conduct themselves in kind. How naive. If Obama tried to buy a car the way he bargained to get the debt ceiling raised, he would leave the lot paying more than the sticker price -- GPS not included.

John Boehner is a capable, likable politician of the old school. He raises prodigious amounts of money for his members, pals around with lobbyist friends and leaves a trail of Camel Ultra Lights smoke in his wake. He expected to wield power in a traditional way. Boehner wasn't afraid to do business with Obama. When it mattered, his rambunctious troops would fall in line, either for the good of the country or for an invitation to the Speaker's Room for pizza and a post office.

It didn't play out that way. With earmarks an evil remnant of Congress' past, a speaker doesn't have much pork to deploy as bait to lure recalcitrant members to his side. And neither of these leaders seems to have reckoned just how far the Tea Party faction would go, or that its members would be deaf to concerns about debt ceilings, credit ratings or the potential for an economy crashing around their ears.

As the deadline drew near, it was the Tea Party that controlled Speaker Boehner, not the other way around. They humiliated Boehner by forcing him to deep-six his grand bargain with Obama. Instead, the speaker pushed through a symbolic package intended to make the Tea Party feel good -- large budget cuts topped with an absurd balanced-budget amendment. The Senate killed it without serious debate.

Once Obama came to believe the danger of default was real, he yielded one concession after another. Shared sacrifice with cuts balanced by revenue increases? He let those go when Boehner couldn't sell it to the anti-tax absolutists in his caucus. A threat to invoke the 14th Amendment to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling? Threats are not this president's style.

Liberals were at first sympathetic to Obama, understanding that when one party is willing to scuttle the economy in order to get its way, the fight is asymmetric. Yet they grew increasingly alarmed to see the president approaching battle like a conscientious objector.

Yes, he needed to show concern over out-of-control spending and the debt, $7 trillion of which was racked up under his predecessor. And he would have to endure some cuts. But his basic miscalculation was apparent back in December -- a comparatively innocent era -- when he said that he could trust Boehner to do the right thing on the debt ceiling because he now had "responsibilities to govern."

Sensible Republicans felt another responsibility more acutely: getting themselves re-elected. Because most are in safe districts where the real threat is a primary from the right, they followed the lead of their Tea Party brethren, even if they don't share the vision of a government shrunken to a point where we don't have our milk pasteurized or our air traffic controlled.

By the time the outline of a final deal emerged Sunday, with the Tea Party giving up nothing and gaining much, liberals could no longer contain their anger. Obama's post-partisan reasonableness earned him his lowest job approval rating of 40 percent from Gallup. If the debt deal kills the shaky economic recovery, Obama's re-election will probably be collateral damage.

Meanwhile, Boehner is stuck with an extremist minority basking in a triumph that he didn't shape. By dancing with disaster, they got their way. Good luck urging them to unlearn that lesson.

If Boehner and Obama both seem diminished, squeezed into smaller roles, maybe it's because the past weeks have proved there is even less room for reason in Washington than we thought.