Frank Rich: The Fiscal Cliff Was a Molehill

Every week, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich talks with assistant editor Eric Benson about the biggest stories in politics and culture. This week: the end of the "Fiscal Cliff" crisis, Howard Schulz's bipartisanship fetish, and John Roberts's latest political play.

In the first hours of the new year, the Senate overwhelmingly approved a not-so-grand bargain to arrest our fall off the "fiscal cliff." The White House is hailing the deal as a big win. Many liberals, from the Iowa Senator Tom Harkin to our own Jonathan Chait, see it as Obama yet again snatching defeat (or at least partial defeat) from the jaws of victory. What's your take?

It is discouraging that Obama would retreat on what he had previously vowed to be a nonnegotiable line in the sand — refusing to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for income over $250,000 a year. (That line moved to $400,000 for individuals, $450,000 for couples.) He ran on this inviolate stand and won. It makes you wonder if he will hold to his other ostensibly firm position — refusing to let the nation’s debt ceiling be held hostage in the coming battle over budget cuts, due in March. That said, Obama did stave off cuts to Social Security and Medicare and extended unemployment insurance for a year. But in truth, for all the news-media hysteria over the “fiscal cliff,” the cliff may prove a molehill in the view of history anyway. It’s just another skirmish in an ideological war that promises far bloodier battles ahead.