President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy aren’t friends.
Biden’s advisers describe the relationship in bland but respectful terms like “cordial” and “professional.” The president on Tuesday called McCarthy a “decent man” and the speaker said after a November meeting between Biden and congressional leaders he “can work with anybody.”
For two politicians defined by, and elevated because of, their close attention to personal relationships, the anodyne nature of the descriptions is telling in the lead up to their high stakes private meeting in the Oval Office.
And, after weeks of both sides attempting to set the conditions for a battle between two diametrically opposed pathways to raising the debt ceiling, expectations for the meeting are low.
“This is the first round of about 20,” one House Democrat told CNN of the months leading up to the June deadline to raise the debt ceiling. “Settle in.”
Even the meeting itself, which White House officials viewed as a traditional sit down at the start of a new Congress and McCarthy calls the opening of talks on the debt limit, has been subject to political wrangling and skirmishes.
They are politicians from different parties, of different generations, raised on opposite sides of the country.
One developed his political acumen in the plodding and collegial Senate. The other in the brisk and often bare-knuckle House. Both overcame setbacks, doubts and an endless number of hurdles to reach the peak of their careers where they now find themselves circling one another like boxers in the ring, sizing up the dynamics of a relationship that will help define the next two years.
First, however, a president and a speaker must navigate a June deadline to raise the debt ceiling with a potentially catastrophic economic crisis looming if they fail – and…
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