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" My man Chuck Todd had a minor cow yesterday at the White House press briefing when Jay Carney refused to confirm or deny that the White House was considering the platinum-coin option as a response to the now-customary Republican legislative vandalism regarding the nation&amp;#039;s credit. (The White House actually has ruled out unilateral action under the 14th Amendment, which I consider unfortunate.) Chuck&amp;#039;s cow-having extended to his electric television show this morning, when he again pronounced himself concerned that the Democrats didn&amp;#039;t not seem to be willing to categorically deny they were considering an option that Chuck and his guests \u2014 a former Bush II treasury dude and the economics guy from Buzzfeed \u2014 see as woefully not serious. The former C-Plus Augustus hireling suggested that a truly serious deal would be for the president to agree to the chained-CPI on Social Security benefits in return for a Republican promise not to mess with the debt ceiling this time around. So the platinum-coin option is a joke, but making it harder for old people to buy food in exchange for a Republican promise not to spray-paint graffiti all over the sides of the economy again is a serious plan. This is the way these people think. This is why my pundit re-education camp in the Smokies is an idea whose time has come. (The platinum coin also has exercised some other people, including lucky children who got everything they wanted from Santa. The idea has more to recommend it almost by the hour.) That Carney refused to give my man Chuck an answer is of a piece with what I see as an emerging strategy from the White House. It is quite plain that the congressional Republicans have learned nothing from the fiscal-cliff fiasco, even less from the election in November, and that they&amp;#039;re just ignoring the fact entirely that their approval rating has to be studied with an electron microscope. The president and his people seem to be coming to the realization \u2014 belatedly, I will grant you \u2014 that there is no bargain to be struck with these people worth having. So, instead, because, like lice and Nickelback, he is more popular than this Congress, the president has adopted a new strategy, one that relies on the fact that the people seem to be on his side. He&amp;#039;s is now governing by wolf tickets. Back in the day, &amp;quot;selling wolf tickets&amp;quot; meant trying to get your way, or trying to win an argument, by an implied threat or some kind. It was something like bluffing, but with an edge. The threat could be empty. Or it could be real. That didn&amp;#039;t matter. What mattered was that the person to whom you were selling your wolf tickets didn&amp;#039;t know if it was real or not. What mattered was whether you could sell your wolf tickets well enough to obtain the result you wanted. The president is getting better at it. Consider: the president says that he &amp;quot;isn&amp;#039;t going to have this argument&amp;quot; over the debt ceiling again. In fact, there&amp;#039;s objectively nothing he can do about it. The Republicans can make him have the argument if they choose to do so. But, by boldly saying that he won&amp;#039;t have it, the president puts the Republicans in the position of being clearly responsible for whatever comes next and, therefore, if things break the way the current polls seem to be breaking, it also puts the Republicans in the position to see if they can become even more unpopular than lice and Nickelback. Consider: the recent turn is the gun-control debate. Yesterday, vice-president Joe Biden let it drop that the president was considering doing what he can about guns by executive order. This, of course, set the wingnutosphere ablaze. Hitler! Stalin! Gun grabbing! Alex Jones Is Right! AIEEEEEE!!!!!! Of course, what the president actually can do by executive order in this area is pretty limited. (Weigel has a nice rundown of what the president&amp;#039;s options are, and they seem to bear no noticable resemblance to the Nuremberg Laws. And, for the love of Mary, we really should have somebody running the ATF.) But Biden&amp;#039;s dropping the executive-order wolf ticket was enough for the other side to lose its mind, in public, at a time in which that side is remarkably unpopular anyway. This may make the eventual negotiations over an actual set of sensible gun laws easier. Or, last, consider the platinum coin. Why on earth would Carney \u2014 and, through him, the White House \u2014 rule it out at this point? First of all, unlike the 14th Amendment option, against which there are some fairly serious constitutional objections, the platinum coin is completely legal, a perfectly legitimate exploitation of a perfectly legitimate loophole. (And, if you love the odd historical irony, that loophole was created by former Congressman Mike Castle of Delaware, who might be in the Senate today as a singularly authoritative voice against the platinum-coin strategy, except that, in 2010, the Republicans in Delaware decided that they&amp;#039;d rather be represented by sideshow freak Christine O&amp;#039;Donnell. Play that sad trombone, Pops.) Second, it is making all the right people, in and out of Congress, completely crazy. Third, and most important, it positions the president as somebody who is willing to try anything to avoid the unnecessary fiscal calamity on which the Republicans seem hellbent on creating. It raises the stakes, publicly and privately, on what the Republicans are trying to do. Now, I don&amp;#039;t think the administration is any more likely actually to mint the platinum coin than Joe Biden is to tour with Parliament Funkadelic. But the administration is getting better at this peculiar variation on the bully pulpit. It&amp;#039;s grown comfortable with the tactic. Used cars, hell. Would you buy a wolf ticket from this man? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a17884/white-house-wolf-tickets-011013/>