Teaching Mr. Obama How to Haggle

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/opinion/09krugman.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

So Mr. Obama was reduced to bargaining for the votes of those centrists. And the centrists, predictably, extracted a pound of flesh — not, as far as anyone can tell, based on any coherent economic argument, but simply to demonstrate their centrist mojo. They probably would have demanded that $100 billion or so be cut from anything Mr. Obama proposed; by coming in with such a low initial bid, the president guaranteed that the final deal would be much too small.

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Mr. President, I call your attention to this Monty Python bit:
http://www.mwscomp.com/movies/brian/brian-14.htm

Your inability to haggle correctly has been noticed by others also:

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http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/01/tax_cuts_as_stimulus.php

It’s one thing to unveil a compromise as a result of a bipartisan negotiation, and another thing to unveil an opening bid that you say you hope conservatives can get on board with.

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So what have you to say for yourself?



They were pleasantly surprised and complimentary about the tax cut that were presented in that framework. Those tax cuts are still in there. I mean, I suppose what I could have done is started off with no tax cuts, knowing that I was going to want some and then let them take credit for all of them. And maybe that's the lesson I learned.
...
It's a little hard for me to take criticism from folks about this recovery package after they presided over a doubling of the national debt. I'm not sure they have a lot of credibility when it comes to fiscal responsibility.