In today’s Washington Post’s “Today’s Quote,” picked up from the comment of
Former Reagan Budget director David Stockman in an interview with The Daily Beast (hat tip to Political Wire), I came across the phrase “Obama will fold faster than a lawn chair.”
As I could not get the idea of “fold faster a lawn chair,” or even “fold a lawn chair,” I consulted Merriam Webster, Cambridge Dictionary Online and The online Slang Dictionary in vain to find none of them carry the definition of the above phrases.
Is David Stockman predicting that President Obama will withdraw his agenda easily like folding a lawn chair, (or give up lawn chair i.e. his stand) and succumb to Republicans to accept their budget reduction plan? What is the exact meaning of “fold faster a lawn chair”? Is this a well-established cliché, though I couldn’t find it in any of dictionaries available?
The sentence containing this phrase is as follows:
Bring it on. I think the Republicans need to stand rigidly firm and shut the government down for a few days. The Obama White House is weak. If the Republicans hold the line, Obama will fold faster than a lawn chair. And the Republicans will get their $60 billion in reductions.
Best Answer
A lawn chair is a lightweight piece of folding furniture, made out of aluminum or fiberglass. It is designed to be easy to fold up and put away, or to unfold and take out, when one has guests for a party on the lawn or patio.
In this case it means Obama will give in to pressure and abandon his position, if he has one, as he has often done in the past in the face of Republican pressure.