RT’s Thom Hartmann explained Tuesday that the greatest presidents have not been compromisers.

“Republicans will surely be emboldened by the way Mr. Obama keeps folding in the face of their threats,” Pulitzer Prize winning economist Paul Krugman wrote Sunday. “He surrendered last December, extending all the Bush tax cuts; he surrendered in the spring when they threatened to shut down the government; and he has now surrendered on a grand scale to raw extortion over the debt ceiling. Maybe it’s just me, but I see a pattern here.”

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“Assuming there was actually a debate between the president and the Republicans — and we’ve just had two guests pushing back on that — but assuming that’s the case, Paul Krugman is right,” Hartmann agreed. “President Obama is about to learn a very tough lesson.”

“The narrative that the president has been promoting throughout his presidency, basically, is that that compromise is what makes transformational presidents. That his hero is Abraham Lincoln or Ronald Reagan, and they were transformational presidents and Clinton wasn’t, and therefore he needed to compromise.”

Hartmann went on to explain that President George Washington didn’t compromise with King George III.

“I don’t recall Abraham Lincoln compromising with Jefferson Davis or Robert E. Lee. It took a few years, but he kicked their butts right across the country,” he said.

“I don’t recall LBJ compromising over Medicare. I don’t recall Reagan compromising about his tax cuts or his spending binge,” Hartmann added.

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Watch this video from RT’s The Big Picture, broadcast Aug. 2, 2011.