Obama Compromises to Avoid Debt Ceiling Armageddon

COMMENTARY | It's quite a personal coincidence that the book I've been reading recently, through my practice of random selection at the local library, is entitled "Avoiding Armageddon," by Martin Schram, a Scripps Howard News Service syndicated columnist.

Observers have been comparing the U.S. government's debt crisis to Armageddon, given the difficult efforts toward deadline compromise that continued over the weekend and into Monday.

So did Martin Schram somehow immediately complete a book on this historic debacle? No. The Armageddon of which Schram writes is the threat not only of nuclear warfare, but also chemical warfare and biological warfare.

This book has caused me to consider critics who say President Obama compromises too much.

My response is that the president hasn't had much choice, and that he has avoided two forms of Armageddon.

Regarding the debt, Obama is compromising on his campaign pledge to eliminate George W. Bush tax cuts for the wealthy because he has justifiably feared that some Republicans would otherwise would allow the debt ceiling to expire, creating the economic Armageddon of a stock market collapse. At of this writing early on Monday morning, there still is doubt that this mess will be resolved, even though the package entirely consists of the Republican demand for spending cuts while lacking absolutely any Obama-desired revenue ad-ons.

As much as a potential revival of a great depression may seem to invite a comparison to Armageddon, an underpublicized Obama compromise in December 2010 helped to forestall an Armageddon that would have been the ultimate. Part of the unbelievably dangerous scenario that Martin Schram describes in his book involves the collapse of the Soviet Union and the weapons of mass destruction that were left virtually unattended, and that in amazing retrospect did not/have not fallen into the hands of terrorists such as Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

Obama again felt forced to compromise on reinstating the Bush tax cuts because Republicans insisted that without an extension for their wealthy friends and wannabes, they would deal with absolutely no other issue -- not even extension of START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) to help verify that Russia is disarming and that terrorists aren't getting their hands on even a small but nonetheless lethal share of the former Soviet stockpile.

In effect, Obama had to decide between tax reform and reducing the risk of World War III. He made the obvious decision, but Republicans were reprehensible in forcing the president into such a choice. They not only got away with it, but they gained politically. And so, why should we be surprised that the GOP zealots would be willing to risk economic Armageddon when they already have shown a propensity to enhance nuclear (and chemical and biological) Armageddon just for the sake of recklessly pigeonholing the president?