The New York Times editorial page appears to have turned against President Obama, but I doubt they are the only ones. As the political situation gets steadily worse, Obama’s continuous capitulations belie a lack of leadership and an inability to get out in the front of issues. There was a time I believed, along with many others, that his conciliatory stance was fostering a rational and moderate image and was part of a crafty chess game of politics with a coherent endgame.

It appears that Obama might ultimately share more similarities with George Bush than Franklin Roosevelt. The one thing, the main thing, that Team Bush could do particularly well is raise money and campaign. When it came to governing and leading the country, that was an unmitigated disaster. Obama, as well, ran a great campaign without seeming to break much of a sweat and garnered a lot of money and key donations. But, in dealing with the bare-knuckle day-to-day business of politics, he seems to have lost a sense of purpose, or an ability to own an issue. I agree with Drew Westen in his editorial: at this point, nobody is really sure what Obama stands for, except perhaps an undying and increasingly atavistic belief that bi-partisan compromise is achievable in our government’s current arrangement.

It seems Obama is fallen victim to the electoral calculus that he accused others in his party of practicing before the mid-terms. He is primarily concerned with pinpointing himself in the political “center” to garner those independent votes. If he alienates his base, so be it — they have nowhere else to go. And so he tries to allure the Republicans into some sort of compromise, but obviously they’re not having it.

New York Times columnist Joe Nocera agrees with me.

All the punditocracy seems to agree — Republicans won and Democrats lost on the debt ceiling negotiations. Obama caved and now they argue about whether he had to or not.  The tea party grabbed the bald eagle and said “give us what we want or the bird gets it!”

Some nations refuse to negotiate with terrorists because they are afraid any capitulation will embolden other terrorists to try the same thing.  Now that Obama and the Democrats have rolled over for the right wing of the Republican party, is there any reason to think the Republicans won’t try it at every opportunity?   They expressed political dominance from a minority position and scored big points.  Being able to play fast-and-loose with the economic situation is an effective weapon.

Even if America did, or does, experience a ding on the old credit card and the projected chain of bad effects occurs, the spin from the right is that it was on account of being in so much debt in the first place, not defaulting on it (or threatening to).  Obviously both parties will point fingers if something like that happens.

Either way, it seems certain it’s going to be bad for a lot of Americans in the near future.