We’ve learned a lot from the fight to attach spending cuts to the debt limit increase. Here are five of the lessons:

1) President Obama can’t negotiate his way out of a paper bag. He yearned for a “grand bargain” of $4 trillion in cuts and tax hikes, giving him something to brag about in the 2012 campaign. He might have gotten it if he hadn’t performed so clumsily once he took over the talks. He took away cuts agreed to by Vice President Biden and insisted on tax increases that couldn’t be offset in tax reform. He made an offer Republicans were bound to refuse.