The heavy fall a few days ago of 80-year-old President Biden, after stumbling on a sandbag in his path, does not reflect the quality of his negotiating skills. President Biden was faced with the need for congressional support in the US House of Representatives, in which the Democratic Party is in the minority, to extend the US debt limit. He demonstrated a stealthy but formidable capacity which wrestled a deal from a Republican majority, straining at the leash to register a salutary defeat against the Democratic President before the presidential elections next year. He then addressed the nation from the Oval Office and praised his Republican opponents, led by Speaker McCarthy, who is beholden to the fiercest reactionaries in the Republican Conference. President Biden negotiated the deal from under the noses of an aggressive Republican majority at the last minute, as they feared being accused of harming the US economy.
