To play with correctness and skill the ends of games, is an important but a very rare accomplishment, expect among the magnates of the game.

The Sequester is a cluster-funk (the worst kind of funk) of epic proportions for the country but in some ways it is absolutely necessary for the Presidency of Barack Obama. 

In his first term, Mr. Obama tried to live up to the rhetoric he ran on of changing the tone in Washington.  He began negotiations at the point he thought should be the final compromise, and bent over backwards to get even one Republican to sign on (though he certainly can be criticized for not doing enough of the negotiating or selling of his policies himself).  Of course, the Republicans being (occasionally) smart politicians realized that if they said NO! to everything, and painted Mr. Obama as an extreme Socialist the public and media would think the truth lay somewhere between them and destroy the President.  Second-term Obama has, thusfar, given up on that failed strategy and started to fight for what he thought was right.

In 1995 and 1996, President Clinton was faced with an intransigent Republican minority that refused to deal with him on budgetary issues the result was a shut down of the government that was mostly blamed on Republicans.  In 2013 we find ourselves in a similar situation.  The Sequester was agreed on so that neither side would be willing to let it happen.  Instead, the Republicans have fallen into the same trap as 95-96 and Mr. Obama is letting them dig deeper and deeper.

Mr. Obama is playing a long-con in this case.  The Republicans get blamed for the disaster occurring in Washington (hence the furious spin from Bob Woodward and John Boehner about who is responsible) and, if the nascent economic recovery falters people will blame Republicans (and their Randian-Hayekian ideology) for the problems.  If 8 years of the Bush Economy weren't enough to make the association in people's minds, I doubt this will be the tipping point, but who knows.  People have begun to turn on the Republicans and their ideas.  The problem is the House of Representatives.  Barring a landslide mid-term turnout for the President's Party (virtually unheard of in American political history) the Republicans have gerrymandered themselves a safe House Majority and need only run-out the clock on the Obama Administration.  In reality, Obama has one year of his Presidency left.  The best thing he can do is help the Republicans continue down their road to irrelevancy so that the next Democratic President can learn to fight first and get things done in 2016.