Obama cluelessness behind debt gridlock

Paul Krugman nails it: President Obama never expected that the current GOP would play this level of hardball with debt-ceiling issues. That's why he was too dumb to link a debt-ceiling rise to his extension of the Bush Obama tax cuts.

Bear in mind that G.O.P. leaders don’t actually care about the level of debt. Instead, they’re using the threat of a debt crisis to impose an ideological agenda. ...

And the reason Republicans are doing this is because they must believe that it will work: Mr. Obama caved in over tax cuts, and they expect him to cave again. They believe that they have the upper hand, because the public will blame the president for the economic crisis they’re threatening to create. In fact, it’s hard to avoid the suspicion that G.O.P. leaders actually want the economy to perform badly.

That said, there's a possible silver lining. Tim Geithner may leave the Treasury after a deal is reached. OTOH, Obama could replace him with ... Larry Summers. Or, almost as bad, Gene Sperling.

The Post lists other Clintonista retreads who could also be in the running:

In the past, analysts have discussed Roger Altman, an investment banker and deputy Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, and Erskine Bowles, a former Clinton chief of staff who co-chaired Obama’s deficit reduction commission, as possible candidates for the top Treasury post. Another Democratic economist popular with business is Laura Tyson, a business school professor at the University of California at Berkeley who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Clinton.

Inside the Obama administration, budget director Jacob J. Lew or chief of staff William M. Daley could be viewed as qualified for the job, but the appointment of either would leave another big hole to fill. Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, could also emerge as a candidate. Sheila Bair, the outgoing chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., would be a dark-horse candidate.

Bair would be a dark horse because she's not a full-blown neolib. She'd get some sort of support from me.