Someone reminded me earlier today that it would only be a concession towards compromise to raise the debt ceiling and re-open the government if the House GOP wants the economy to crash. With that being said the President, for the sake of the stability of the country, can not negotiate with the House GOP until they agree to open the government and raise the debt ceiling.
If President Obama does hold firm and enters negotiations with the House in order to get the House to raise the debt limit this will set the precedent that when the minority party wants a concession they can simply extract this policy position out of the sitting party in power by threatening total economic chaos. If the minority party can simply extract these policies concession even against the will of the election results it renders the elections a meaningless exercise.
Having a position of funding levels and having an honest disagreement over how much the government should spend is fine to have but not in the context of threatening economic chaos in order to win policy arguments. Doing this is simply put un-democratic, unAmerican, and unacceptable.