Everyone was waiting to see if President Obama would be fiery and combative on Wednesday at his first post-election news conference — specifically on how tough a stand he would take on the so-called fiscal-cliff talks. And, as it transpired, the president who stood before reporters was nearly unrecognizable from the President Obama who, for four years, clung to a misguided belief in a postpartisan Washington where reasonable people sit down to work out solutions.
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After a few days of public dancing around by members of Congress on the fiscal-cliff talks, the most important, immediate thing Mr. Obama did was to be unequivocal about his bottom-line position: the Bush tax cuts for the middle class should be extended right now, with the rest allowed to expire, and then he is willing to talk about closing tax loopholes, and tax reform and spending cuts.
"What I'm not going to do is to extend Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent that we can't afford and, according to economists, will have the least positive impact on our economy," Mr. Obama said. After the campaign, Mr. Obama said, "this shouldn't be a surprise to anybody," noting that more Americans said they favored a tax increase on the rich than actually voted for him.
Mr. Obama was at his most fiery and combative when he was asked about the killings at the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and a threat by Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham to block him if he decides to nominate Susan Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, to be secretary of state in his second term. Republicans have been attacking Ms. Rice for saying five days after the killings that they may have grown out of a spontaneous protest over an anti-Islamic video.
"She has represented the United States and our interests in the United Nations with skill and professionalism and toughness and grace," he said.
"If Senator McCain and Senator Graham and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me," he said. "And I'm happy to have that discussion with them. But for them to go after the U.N. ambassador, who had nothing to do with Benghazi, and was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received, and to besmirch her reputation is outrageous."
Mr. Obama let his annoyance flash with unfamiliar clarity when he said that if he decides that Ms. Rice is the right choice for secretary of state, "then I will nominate her."
There were moments when Mr. Obama was not as crisply clear as he might have been. He was a bit vague, for example, about global warming. He seemed to be preparing Americans for the fact that Congress will never approve a carbon tax through a cap-and-trade scheme, but he said he was committed to regulatory reform. He also said he was committed to immigration reform, starting by putting into law the regulatory version of the Dream Act, which would allow young immigrants and students to get on a path to legal status.
But his main focus was on the immediate talks about averting the fiscal cliff: the potential for a simultaneous expiring of the Bush-era tax cuts on everyone, and the imposition of across-the-board spending cuts known as the "sequester." The combination would be very dangerous for the slow recovery.
The first step, he said, is to pass, by next week, a law that extends tax cuts for middle-class Americans — on the first $250,000 of income, which Mr. Obama noted would be benefit richer Americans as well. "Half of the danger to our economy is removed by that single step," he said. "And what we can then do is shape a process whereby we look at tax reform, which I'm very eager to do." That could include closing loopholes, which some Republicans are now holding out as the solution for the deficit crisis, but that would not be sufficient.
Mr. Obama said that extending tax cuts to the wealthy would cost close to $1 trillion, "and it's very difficult to see how you make up that trillion dollars, if we're serious about deficit reduction, just by closing loopholes and deductions. You know, the math tends not to work."
Mr. Obama — and the members of Congress who have been preening before the cameras about the fiscal cliff — left some big issues unaddressed. Tax rates are not the only issue that has to be resolved. The alternative minimum income tax will once again spread lower through the tax brackets if nothing is done; the enhancement of the earned-income tax credit that was part of the stimulus package needs to be extended, along with long-term federal unemployment benefits. Mr. Obama also left open the question of how to avoid the threatened sequester, which would take effect in January if Congress does not reach an agreement to cancel it. He may simply be holding out that threat as a cudgel for negotiators, but it is an issue he will have to address relatively soon.
Mr. Obama's other challenge is to keep up the pressure on Congress to reach a deal by taking his case to the public. That kind of follow-through has never been his strong suit, but it has to be now.
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