Team Obama Takes on Fiscal Cliff

The 2012 campaign can’t go on, but it will go on. The White House announced on Tuesday that President Obama will be going on a series of campaign-style events this week—an indication that the administration is launching a public-relations offensive to help persuade Americans to back its plan to avoid the fiscal cliff. Obama needs all the friends he can get in the negotiations after his own party said on Tuesday that the president must demand Republicans agree to raise the nation’s $16.4 trillion debt limit as part of any deal. A deal is necessary to stop draconian spending cuts from being automatically enacted and from the Bush tax cuts to expire—a series of events that, if they happen, are referred to as “going over the fiscal cliff.”