The unstoppable force has met the immovable obstacle. The Republican Party, fixated on dismantling the Affordable Healthcare Act, is more than willing to use the debt ceiling and threaten a credit default to get their way. President Obama will not negotiate on the debt ceiling, but also will not raise it himself. So the big question is, if the Republicans fail to raise the debt ceiling, will the President allow us to default? No one really knows the answer, so to make everything simpler I advocate that the President ignore the debt ceiling.

First, ignoring the debt ceiling is constitutionally mandated. The fourteenth amendment says “the validity of public debt…shall not be questioned.” Defaulting on our debt would question its validity. So many constitutional scholars argue the president can use the fourteenth amendment as an option to raise the debt ceiling himself.

But, they are missing the point, because ignoring the debt ceiling is not an option. The president has to take an oath to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” If he does not enforce the fourteenth amendment, he is breaching the oath of office. So, if raising the debt ceiling would enforce the fourteenth amendment over Congress potentially violating it, the president has to take action. Period. When his press secretaries or aides say the president will not use the fourteenth amendment “option,” they are mischaracterizing it. It is not an option. He has to do it.

Second, the risks of defaulting are too high for the president to do nothing. We are at the center of the world economy because our dollar is the global reserve currency, we are the center of global trade and commerce and our stock markets are globally the most influential. So if we default, we lose our creditworthiness, meaning most of the money the world has invested in our dollar has gone to waste. It would melt the world economy down along with our own. Our debt would increase because our borrowing costs and interest rates would skyrocket. We would be forced into a vicious cycle of having exorbitant bills and no money to pay them back. Make no mistake, the consequences are catastrophic. If anything else, common sense dictates that the president should take the necessary action to stop a default. Any reasonable person would do the same.

Third, it ends republican hostage taking. Threatening the wellbeing of the world economy over narrow political interests like the Affordable Healthcare Act is nonsensical. It presumes bill’s effects are worse than a default, which even in the absolute worst case, could not be true. The republicans know this. This is just a grudge match from republicans who are unhappy with Obama’s reelection.

Just ask Indiana Republican Marlin Stutzman, who exclaimed that Republicans “ have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.” That’s because if this was about the Affordable Care Act, Republicans would have acquiesced around it. But their laundry list of unrealistic and unrelated demands, from gutting the Consumer Protection Bureau to approving the Keystone XL pipeline, demonstrate this is about the President himself. If they want to bring the fight to him by taking the debt ceiling as a hostage, he should fight back in the least ambiguous way possible, by shooting the hostage. At the very least, the Tea Party caucus thinks they can trod on congressional democrats and the president, and would be very surprised to learn that is not the case.

But finally, doing nothing is the worst thing any President can do. The most memorable presidents are the active ones. Jefferson, Lincoln, Wilson and both Roosevelts are amongst the most esteemed presidents because they took action on their own to protect the interests of the country, even if that action was unconstitutional or unilateral. They are starkly different from presidents like Hoover and Buchanan, who did played by the rules and watched their country implode. If President Obama stands idly by as the country goes into default and the world economy melts down around him, would any of his achievements matter? Of course not. Strong, hard hitting leaders are remembered. And now, President Obama needs to be one of them.