Boehner Was Telling The Truth: Obama's Bait and Switch

This story from this morning's Washington Post is a superb bit of "inside baseball" journalism.  In it, the details of the "grand bargain" that John Boehner and Barack Obama negotiated last summer become apparent, as does the duplicity of the President's negotiating style.  Read that whole thing; basically, Boehner and Obama had a deal that would have meant something.  Real spending cuts, real tax reform and $800B in revenue.  When an effort outside of the negotiation (a Senate based group called the Gang of Six) came forward with a recommendation that included far more revenue, the President and his team feared getting beaten up by their own side for having settled for $800B.  He came back at Boehner with a demand for $400B more, claiming in essence that the Gang of Six had changed the bidding. Boehner did not agree, and he walked away.

I remember the dueling press conferences that are cited in the article--particularly Boehner's statement that dealing with the President was like dealing with "jell-o".  I remember his assertion that he thought he had a deal, and that the President tried to up the ante.  I remember at the time thinking that it was a believable charge--not because I find President Obama to be particularly dishonorable, but because I sensed in the emotion in which Boehner delivered the news that he was telling the truth.  Now we have evidence.  He was.