This weakness in the executive branch is dangerous.
Even if you're wrong, you never want to be weak. Weakness is the worst. We'd be better off with another FDR, a strong president who would just tell the ratings agencies how irrelevant they are:
But while they prate of economic laws, men and women are starving. We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings. -- FDR
We have to tax the rich. And do a jobs program. And financial reform and audit the Fed. Tax the Hell out of the rich on every dollar they spend offshore or send offshore.
The rich have to start paying, cuts are no kind of answer -- if we cut, that's going to cause a real Depression and you cannot get out of austerity with more austerity.
(Don't forget.. if we had another FDR in office the rich would be taxed right now and there wouldn't have been a downgrade.)
EDIT:
example.. France taxes its rich, and France is going to keep its AAA rating:
French AAA rating stable, says S&P
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/french-aaa-rating-stable-says-sp/173767-7.html