Pardon me, but WTF is this?
[A]s the president returned home on Sunday to face an even more rigidly divided capital city, Mr. Obama went even further: he blamed himself for the failure to do what he had repeatedly promised: to change the tone.
He said his own “obsessive” focus on implementing the right policies had led him to ignore a part of the reason voters handed him a mandate in 2008.
“I neglected some things that matter a lot to people, and rightly so: maintaining a bipartisan tone in Washington,” he told reporters in a brief question-and-answer session aboard Air Force One as he returned from a 10-day trip abroad. “I’m going to redouble my efforts to go back to some of those first principles,” he promised.
This from the president who voluntarily watered down virtually every significant policy proposal in a predictably futile effort to secure Republican support. Do we really have to go over the whole “80 Senate votes for the stimulus,” and the “sacrifice the very popular public option so that Republicans will support health care” things again? How’d that all work out?
And it gets worse.
[Obama’s] advisers are deeply concerned about winning back political independents, who supported Obama two years ago by an eight-point margin but backed Republicans for the House this year by 19 points. To do so, they think he must forge partnerships with Republicans on key issues and make noticeable progress on his oft-repeated campaign pledge to change the ways of Washington.
And how’s that expected to go?
Whether Obama will find a partner in Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), presumed to be the next House speaker, or Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is an open question.
Both Republicans have indicated a willingness to find common ground, but both have also suggested that working with the White House won’t be a top priority. McConnell has said flatly that his primary goal over the next two years is to make sure Obama is not reelected.
OK then.
As I’ve said before,
This bipartisanship fetish has got to end. Bipartisanship for its own sake is totally meaningless. The point is to get through something that works. If something works, no one cares who voted for it.
The National Journal weekly bloggers poll in which I take part asked this last week: “Politically, how important is it to President Obama that health care reform be bipartisan?” There was quite a diversity of opinion on that question from both lefty and righty bloggers. I answered “Not at all important,” and explained as follows:
What’s important is that he get it passed, and that it works. If it works, no one will care if no Republicans voted for it. And if it fails, no one will care if it was the most bipartisan bill ever.
Only the punditocracy cares about whether something is “bipartisan.” Normal people just want policies that work.
I think that was true then, and I think it’s true now. Please, Mr. President, don’t learn the wrong lesson from the “shellacking” that Democrats in the non-Massachusetts states took on election day. People want something that works – specifically, at the moment, something that can help the economy recover faster and create more jobs. A big part of the reason you haven’t been able to deliver on that so far is that you’ve been so obsessed with bipartisanship that you’ve emasculated your policies to the point where they are nearly guaranteed not to accomplish very much, even though it was perfectly obvious from day 1 that the GOP wasn’t going to work with you anyway.
Now, of course, the problem is much more significant because of the changed numbers in the Senate and especially the House. I frankly don’t know what Obama’s options are for the next two years; I expect to see very little significant legislation being enacted. But for Obama to say that the big problem over the last two years was that he didn’t try hard enough to work with Republicans … wow. That sure doesn’t augur well.
This reminds me of something I wrote before:
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p>But I agree with you, I don’t think he should go to the traditional Republicans for the answers, I don’t think they have them. He should understand that the voters hate the Rs even more than the Ds. Maybe he is too comfortable with institutions.
Nationwide, a majority just decided to ‘hate’ Democrats instead.
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p>Obama is going to have to run nationwide. It’s like being a Mayor – an issue might be good in your city, but if it’s not liked state-wide, you ditch it when you run for Governor.
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p>Nobody on BMG, or any other MA Progressive, is going to vote for anybody else. Why pander to you?
He can talk to Republican voters, sure. But the Republican Party is so far into the pocket of big money it will never find its way out. For instance do you imagine the Rs will vote to force a repeal of the individual mandate? The part of healthcare the insurance companies like? How dumb was it for the state Republicans to hold a coronation for a healthcare executive for governor the same year everybody’s premiums are going up 10-25%?
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p>Massachusetts Democrats will be an insufferable group of clowns for a couple years, that’s true. I don’t recommend Obama listen much to them either.
Compulsion to purchase is too far a stretch for the Commerce Clause. But we’ll see.
…and I tend to take a very loose constructionist view of federal power. Universal health care promotes the general welfare which the preamble cites as a key purpose for creating the government. On the merits, however, I’m not a big fan of compulsary purchase, but that applies equally to federal and state levels.
Well, there’s the issue – not everyone does, including a bunch of people with life tenure. The argument against the individual mandate is, basically, that the Commerce Clause doesn’t authorize it because forcing individuals to buy something does not constitute “regulation” of interstate commerce. I’ve said before that I think the argument is non-trivial, though I suspect it will ultimately be unsuccessful.
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p>There are other, much more silly arguments being raised as well. They will fail. The Commerce Clause IMHO is the only one worth talking about.
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p>Finally, I would note that the Preamble does not confer authority on the federal government to do anything. However, “general welfare” also appears in Art. I, s. 8.
Regulating interstate commerce is one power exclusively in the hands of Congress vis-a-vis the states. I don’t buy the notion that everything Congress does has to fit into that or any other duty listed in I,8, which I see as a “must do” list, not a restrictive list. If the federal government wants to do other things (provided of course it does not impinge on certain ennumerated rights) I see that not as overstepping bounds, but rather going above and beyond the call of duty. All words, even preambles mean something and the framers gave six justifications for establishing the government. Anything that furthers any one or more of those justifications is fair game. Personally, I wouldn’t try to pretend the mandate is a commerce clause issue. There is no provision of the constitution that says that no person shall be required to spend money. Requirement to spend money is exactly what taxes are after all.
let us just say that that’s a creative approach to constitutional interpretation. It’s not one for which you’ll find a lot of support out in the legal world.
I don’t think my interpretation is that far from the mark of what has become pretty standard in practice since the New Deal.
What you call the “restrictive list” theory, otherwise known as “enumerated powers,” is pretty much accepted by everyone. I can’t think of any constitutional scholar or judge who takes that view that Congress has general “police power” to do whatever it wants without tying it specifically to an enumerated power in Art. I, s. 8. That’s just not how it works.
Many of what the conservatives argue are unconstitutional are unenumerated so they have a point in that regard. It’s just that I don’t agree that such should be the standard. I’m guessing you probably support the following unenumerated powers and bureaucracies:
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p>Social Security
Department of Education
National Park Service
Civil Rights Act(s)
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p>Personally, I cringe when I hear “states rights”. There are certainly things that on the merits may be more effective left to the states. However, that term has been code for slavery, nullification, secession, Jim Crow. History has taught me to wonder what no good a state is up to when it starts screaming “states rights” too loudly.
It isn’t a matter or Congress trammeling enumerated rights. When the Bill of Rights was proposed, one argument against it was the idea that those would be regarded as the ONLY rights. But it was passed because Congress had no authority other than that which was SPECIFICALLY given to it – ALL other authority devolved to the states and people.
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p>Congress is attempting to use the authority specifically given to it to regulate commerce to compel individual purchase. But it has no such specific power to require purchase, and it is usurping that authority from the states which DO have such an authority.
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p>The preamble is as irrelevant as a book review on a dust jacket from a legal point of view.
…but I would have supported inclusion of the Bill of Rights because I wouldn’t have faith in the government to not restrict those freedoms. You’re wrong on specifically though; there was debate about including the word “expressly” before “delegated” in the 10th Amendment and it was denied. Besides, Alexander Hamilton, who was a delegate to the Federal Convention and passionate advocate for the Constitution’s adoption also had a view similar to mine. George Washington, who presided at the convention also was guided by this view during his own presidency. Your view is more in line with Thomas Jefferson, who wasn’t a delegate to the convention and thus in my view less an authority on intent. Preamble was wordsmithed for a reason to, and I stand by my view and reject yours.
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p>The Roberts Court has stretched many a clause already, most conspicuously in Citizens United… so let’s not pretend they’ll hew to anything like logic, here or elsewhere.
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p>Here’s a question for ya… why, in the name of all markets that are free, would health care providers need to have their titular clientele be compelled to purchase them? Would not they, under circumstances similar to that of a market, be dizzy with excitement, nay positively rapturous, over the sheer number of people desiring to be healthy?
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p>Or, put another way, would not a mandate be entirely superflous in a truly free exercise of commerce?
Without them, you lose.
…has a petition you can sign to ask the President not to cave on tax cuts.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/wo…
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p>And has a petition to add your name to:
http://www.change.org/petition…
Obama approaches the Presidency like a grad student approaches his dissertation: with logic and too much concern for pleasing his dissertation committee.
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p>But the Presidency doesn’t sit on some library shelf gathering dust. Unlike 99% of dissertations, what he does matters. Lives are at stake.
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p>If he doesn’t change, the epitaph of his Presidency will read, “He tried not to make any mistakes.”
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is really the only way to force compromise. You don’t get compromise by being weak, you get it by being strong. Ensure that Boehner and the GOP will be blamed for everything that goes wrong over the next 2 years, and you bet your behind that they’ll find the light, but only then. There has to be consequences for them not getting along if we’re to make them get along.
How many votes do you think Barney Frank would get in John Spratt’s district in South Carolina?
Not party. The Democratic supermajority acted like wimps. Where was the courage, the determination, the concern for the little guy, and the BIG programs? They were not brave. They were not determined. There was no discernable focus on jobs.
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p>Therefore, many were viewed as expendable.
rode the six hundred.
Well, he said to stand up and be strong. Mark Bail says Obama should have guts and glory. YOu think he should be more progressive and Apricot says do what Michael Moore wants. David feels that the non-Massachusetts part of the country could learn a lot from Massachusetts.
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p>So I assume you want Obama to be more like Barney Frank because he had the winning formula here in Massachusetts.
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p>Maybe I’m reading too much into your comments though and there’s something else you’d like Obama to do.
…how many votes Frank would get in what I assume is a conservative SC district. My point is I don’t care because you only get one district and Frank does just fine in his own. Of course who knows what would happen if such a district were actually given a progressive choice. You definitely lose all the battles you don’t even fight.
He knows what’s going on. The only reasonable conclusion is that he’s getting exactly the results that he wants. He’s using the Republican intransigence to end up where he wants to be.
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p>I hope I’m wrong, and that there’s a more-plausible explanation, but nothing else makes sense. Why else would the greatest orator of our time go mute since his inauguration?
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p>Nobody hires the DLC to run Washington, or hires Simpson and Bowles to run a “Deficit Commission”, if they want to help Working Americans. It’d be like hiring John Gotti to do your gardening.
Maybe this is really what O wants, maybe he’s a “centrist” (like, a “soft” Republican) in progressive’s clothing (hey, like Deval Patrick!), and we just believed what we wanted to believe when we elected him. He hired and appointed the guys who wrecked the economy as his economic advisers, and he takes his cues from the right, figuring his left base will always be there, as P Porcupine says, so why try to please us?
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p>Now what?
Obama’s definitely more Democrat than Republican and I would suggest the Governor a little more to his left. (Marriage equality comes to mind as an example.) Most of the great speeches of his people remember are about unity. “There are not red states or blue states, but the United States.” Therefore I’m not the least bit surprised that his attitude is one of moderation and conciliation. I just thought and hoped he would have learned by now just how intransigent the Republicans are.
As I’ve stated previously Obama is no different than the last handful of Democratic Presidents: ideologically very liberal but painstakingly conservative in process and methodology. Every President and nearly every serious Dem candidate since 1976 has fit this mold exactly: Carter, Mondale, Bradley, Clinton, Gore, Kerry… etc… The exceptions are McGovern, Kennedy and Dean and no others. Obama, being black, and the first black president at that (unless you count Clinton… Hi Toni…), has an even more narrow path to tread here…
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p>This is, of course, a recipe for disappointment for those here who are aggressively liberal in both ideology and methodology. Ah well…. LBJ isn’t walking through that door…
The old 13-dimensional chess theory isn’t really cutting it anymore.
Nothing good for the middle class can come of this, and that’s the way, I believe, that Obama wants it.
Let’s say you’re right that he favors an “attack on working Americans” (not sure I agree, but I’ll play along). Nobody wants to put themselves in a situation where they literally cannot get anything accomplished. Yet that’s where he is.
The Predator Class is sitting pretty right now. They’ve been able to stop their taxes from returning to higher (but still-historically-low) levels. Headed off a return of Glass-Steagall. They have the Fed doing whatever they ask. They have the “Deficit Commission” recommending tax cuts for them and “shared sacrifice” for the rest of us. Low-level union busting via RTTT. Forced payments to private health insurers will keep us from having efficient health insurance for at least 5-10 years.
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p>It’s good to be rich, and Obama’s done a fantastic job for that crowd.
Let’s face it, most of the people he’s surrounded himself with are centrist Washingtonians. He’s pretty happy with his accomplishments, just confused about why they aren’t better received by the public.
I don’t think Obama is trying to attack working Americans.
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p>But I don’t think he’s too much troubles by others’ attacks. He’s get other priorities.
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p>It’s getting harder and harder to take the American duopoly seriously.
But certain people that he’s unleashed are very troubling.
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p>I don’t see that one hires Summers, Emanuel, Geithner, Bernanke, and that crowd and expects a good outcome for the middle class. I suppose that there’s some possibility that Obama was just naive, although I doubt it.
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p>But unilaterally starting a “Deficit Commission” and appointing Simpson and Bowles to run it really can’t be seen as anything but an attack.
is indistinguishable from malice.
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p>See: Bush Administration response to Hurricane Katrina.