The Republican leadership blinked.

They agreed Friday to postpone their showdown with President Obamafor three months after initially vowing there would be no deal on raising the debt ceiling without spending cuts. But before they and the Democrats embark on yet another round of contentious and seemingly dysfunctional tax and budget talks, here’s a simple suggestion: a crash course in negotiating tactics.

When I broached the idea to Daylian Cain, who teaches a popular class in negotiating at the Yale School of Management, he immediately volunteered to take his course to Washington. “I’ll show up with my PowerPoints and a bottle of Scotch,” he said.

...“This isn’t rocket science,” William Ury told me this week. Dr. Ury, along with Roger Fisher, who was a law professor at Harvard at the time, wrote the classic work on negotiating, “Getting to Yes,” and has been refining his insights at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. “It’s sad to watch this kind of brinkmanship,” he said.

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