Debt

When a person decides to run for public office, particularly a national office, they are immediately faced with a dilemma. What happens when your basic principles conflict with your constituents? You can change your platform to fit with the voters and improve your chances of winning or you can stick by your guns and decrease your chances of winning. Assuming you are running because you believe you can make a positive contribution to the country, you realize that you can only make a difference if you win. So you decide to change your campaign to fit the desires of the people and after you are in office you move away from your campaign and toward your beliefs. This opens you to criticism from the other side but if you can pull it off you can get reelected. On the other hand if you don’t change and don’t get elected you can go home feeling like you are a person of principal and leave the improving the country to someone else.
We have such a choice going on at this time. Michele Bachmann is a person of principal who will not change to get elected and we have Obama who will. Here is a quote from Senator Obama in 2006 regarding raising the debt limit.
“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure,” he said on March 16, 2006. “Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership . Americans deserve better. I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America's debt limit.”
Here is President Obama in April of this year:
“Failure by Congress to raise the U.S. debt limit “could plunge the world economy back into recession,” President Barack Obama declared Friday.
Our inexperienced President found out that there is big difference between campaigning and governing.
But here is how you resolve the problem and get set for reelection.
Obama "thinks it was a mistake," presidential spokesman Jay Carney told reporters. "He realizes now that raising the debt ceiling is so important to the health of this economy and the global economy that it is not a vote that, even when you are protesting an administration's policies, you can play around with."