Obama and Payroll Tax Cut -- Compromise or Capitulation? (ContributorNetwork)

COMMENTARY | A vice, St. Augustine reminds us, is a distorted impersonation of virtue.

I offer this principle in case there is anyone who might see virtue in the way President Barack Obama has positioned himself in the standoff over extending the payroll tax holiday. Despite originally insisting on a surcharge on millionaires to pay for popular legislation that increased the average workers' pay by $1,000 a year, the president and Senate Democrats had agreed to drop this demand if Republicans abandoned their insistence for a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline.

When the dust had settled, the Senate had passed -- and the president had agreed to sign -- a bill that jettisoned his proposed millionaire's tax but retained the Republican insistence for a quick decision on the pipeline. (Unaware of the hostage holder's rules of etiquette according to which, when your demands have been met, you release the hostage. The Republicans in the House revolted over the deal most of their Senate colleagues had agreed to -- but I digress.)

Compromise is the sine qua non of democracy. In a system in which the minority party can obstruct most action, the art of give and take is essential for the system to move forward. To some, Obama's retreat from his stated position in this instance might look like compromise. But it's not.

This is where Augustine's principle comes in. Vice can look a lot like virtue to the uninitiated. Augustine put forward this principle while agonizing over some pears he had stolen as a youth. Theft, he declared, attempts to gain illegitimately the fruits of hard labor. Lust, which he knew a bit about as well, is a perverted attempt to achieve the love we all desire.

And in Obama's case, capitulation in some respect resembles compromise in that in both cases one must deviate from one's originally stated position. But a true compromise requires a roughly 50-50 split, with each side giving up something significant in the negotiations. In this instance, the Republicans got a tax cut, got it paid for entirely by budget reductions and got the president to accept a provision he had explicitly threatened to veto. The president got, well, rolled.

The problem for supporters of President Obama is that this is not just an isolated incident but part of a much larger pattern. The president campaigns on the pledge that he will end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy; the cuts are extended. The Republicans insist on $32 billion in budget cuts or threaten to shut down the government; they get $38 billion. The Republicans demand the debt ceiling raise be accompanied by corresponding cuts, while the president insists there should be a balance between revenue enhancements and budget cuts; the final deal raises the debt ceiling entirely through budget cuts.

In the midst of the debt ceiling negotiations, President Obama derided Washington as a place that did not seem to appreciate the importance of compromise. The president, unfortunately, seems to have misunderstood the meaning of the term.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obama/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20111222/pl_ac/10728617_obama_and_payroll_tax_cut__compromise_or_capitulation

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