Obama Owns the Economy, but Can He Own Deficit Reduction, Too?

ABC News(WASHINGTON, D.C.) -- The President returned to the bully pulpit yesterday to take on a familiar role: mediator in chief. A week after comparing congressional Republicans to schoolchildren who were more interested in protecting corporate jet owners than needy Americans, the President invited congressional leaders to the White House on Thursday for another round of debt ceiling negotiations saying, “It’s my hope that everybody’s going to leave their ultimatums at the door, that we’ll all leave our political rhetoric at the door.”

Of course, there's little indication that either side is willing to undraw their lines in the sand. But, with the Aug. 2 deadline looming, something and someone is going to have to give.

The worry for Republicans is that they can't sell anything with the words "revenue" or "taxes" to their Tea Party members. For Democrats, giving in on entitlements not only threatens to anger their liberal base, but it takes away a key weapon in their campaign arsenal, namely hitting Republicans over the head for their vote to fundamentally alter Medicare.

For the President, however, a compromise is a win. It allows him to return to the 2008 version of Obama; the politician who rises above typical D.C. politics. It provides him the opportunity to "own" a GOP talking point. And it gives him tangible evidence to push back on the charge that he's a just a big government liberal.

Republicans, meanwhile, are focused on keeping the heat on the Obama economy.

In its first installment of a "month long economic messaging campaign that will reach into battleground states and test new digital marketing strategies, the RNC released a new television ad, ‘Change Direction.' The ad highlights the nation's bleak economic situation and ends with the line "don’t let Obama drive us to disaster."

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