“To a person, they said the President’s going to cave.”
—Henry Waxman summarizing the GOP’s position
The only obstacle to President Obama’s defeat in 2012 is the Republican Party, the once Grand Old Party. His presidential opponents have even less to recommend them than he does. The fact is, Obama is remarkably incompetent. That’s what I said. The charming, intellegent, articulate Democrat we have in the White House, the guy who received a Nobel Peace Prize in his first year of office, is incompetent. He may be better than his opponent was, but he is a terrible Democrat and an ineffectual President.
The Left noticed a long time ago. Others are following. As the Daily Mail reports,
President Barack Obama alienated 37,00 twitter followers last night with scores of tweets urging followers to contact their local Congressman over the debt deal.
With his approval rating sitting at an all-time low of 40 per cent amidst the debt crisis, tens of thousands of Americans unfollwed the President to avoid the deulge.
The president’s staff sent a total of 118 tweets asking his followers to write their Republican lawmakers to demand a compromise on debt legislation.
From the beginning, Obama has failed to advance a Democratic agenda from his anemic stimulus to squandering a Democratic majority in the House during health reform to the Simpson-Bowles Committee to his willingness to put Medicare and Social Security under the knife. Add to this his willful alienation of the Left. Less than two weeks ago, the White House posted a 4 month-old video on White House.gov in which he claims that the Huffington Post would have accused Abraham Lincoln of compromise when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The comparison was not only inaccurate but gratuitously offensive to the Left. As a Democrat, Obama is a tragic, if not epic, fail. He is in the process of giving away the store.
Obama’s character is becoming an issue. In a recent issue of The Boston Review, Mark Schmitt reviews a handful of books on Obama’s presidency. The authors view the President as a fraud, a clod (politically, that is), and a man trying to govern in an ungovernable political system. I don’t think Obama is a fraud. He never pretended to be anything other than he was. As Alec MacGillis, who spent a year with the Obama campaign wrote,
Barack Obama was running not on a record of past achievement or on a concrete programme for the future, but instead on the simple promise of thoughtfulness – the notion that the leadership of the country should be entrusted not on the basis of résumé and platform, but on the prospect of applying to the nation’s problems one man’s singularly well-tempered intelligence
By now, it’s obvious that Obama doesn’t and probably can’t negotiate. Before, during, and after Obama’s failures, Paul Krugman predicted and afterwards documented what would happen. Former Reagan advisor Bruce Bartlett has pointed it out and blames the fact that Obama grew up when the Cold War and unions required leaders to know how to negotiate. If insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, the Obama Administration is crazier than Congress.
The GOP, even in its current state of madness, is not necessarily an easy opponent, but their extremism is a clear vulnerability and according to Elizabeth Drew, it was known that the Republicans would use the debt ceiling to extract cuts from the Democrats. If Obama’s negotiating skills are apparent to political observers, it is even more obvious in Washington. Drew writes:
established in both Democrats’ and Republicans’ minds the thought that Obama was a weak negotiator—a “pushover.” He was more widely seen among Democrats and other close observers as having a strategy of starting near where he thinks the Republicans are—at the fifty-yard line—and then moving closer to their position
In July, it was Obama who
suddenly injected Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid into the deficit and debt negotiations, many, perhaps most, Democrats were dismayed. They believed that the President was offering up the poor and the needy as a negotiating gambit. (His position was that if the Republicans would give on taxes, he’d give on entitlements.) A bewildered Pelosi said after that meeting, “He calls this a Grand Bargain?” And she came down firmly against any changes in those programs that would hurt beneficiaries.
Moreover, the Democrats had their own political reasons for opposing reductions in Medicare benefits. They had had great success in campaigning against Paul Ryan’s bizarre proposal, adopted by the House (despite even Boehner’s expressed misgivings), that would turn Medicare into a voucher system. According to Ryan’s plan the government would give future eligible Medicare recipients $6,000 and let them shop for private insurance. (Good luck.).
It seems ridiculous, but in Obama’s case, it warrants pointing out, that every counteroffer should be equal in intensity to the opposition’s offer. This is Strategy 101. If the GOP wants to go right, you go left. It’s like a tug-of-war. If you want to end up in the middle, you can’t just give ground. If a weak stimulus were politically required, ask for a larger one. You cover yourself with your base and create the sought after bipartisan ethos. By staking out proposals to his left, Obama could have compromised, ended up with more Democratic results, and still maintained his image as a bipartisan compromiser. Obama and his advisers don’t seem to understand the basics of negotiation.
Added to his basic political incompetence is the fact that ideologically speaking, Obama is not a Democrat. Bruce Bartlett writes
Although Republicans routinely accuse him of being a socialist, an honest examination of his presidency must conclude that he has in fact been moderately conservative to exactly the same degree that Nixon was moderately liberal.
Here are a few examples of Obama’s effective conservatism:
- His stimulus bill was half the size that his advisers thought necessary;
- He continued Bush’s war and national security policies without change and even retained Bush’s defense secretary;
- He put forward a health plan almost identical to those that had been supported by Republicans such as Mitt Romney in the recent past, pointedly rejecting the single-payer option favored by liberals;
- He caved to conservative demands that the Bush tax cuts be extended without getting any quid pro quo whatsoever;
- And in the past few weeks he has supported deficit reductions that go far beyond those offered by Republicans.
Although Republicans routinely accuse him of being a socialist, an honest examination of his presidency must conclude that he has in fact been moderately conservative to exactly the same degree that Nixon was moderately liberal.
To hope in 2011 is to truly be audacious. The national and global economy are doomed. Our nation is governed by a crazed party that would destroy it on principle and an ineffectual intellectual who is out of his depth. His one advantage–that he doesn’t foam at the mouth like most of the GOP field–could be eliminated by the nomination of a relatively moderate, multi-term, former Republican governor of a blue state like George Pataki. With the President’s poularity at 31% with Independents, Pataki could be the first GOP candidate with an electoral advanatage over Obama.
When you see two people as different as Obama and Bush doing the same thing, maybe the conditions are forcing them into those choices.
First, much of the world is moving forward towards a renewable, sustainable future – while the USA may be left behind due to a lack of strong political leadership and capture by corporate greed, this is not true everywhere.
Second, the impact of the Global Reporting Initiative and the changes flowing from it should not be underestimated. See http://www.globalreporting.org/Home More than 2000 large corporations worldwide are committed to planning for a future in which they remain profitable because the societies where they are located are thriving.
I realize this idea has not caught on with the redmeat profit barons in the USA – and I do consider that to be a failure of business education in our country due to focusing solely on shareholder profit taking.
President Obama had the opportunity, with his landslide election during a time of great challenge to truly lead. I don’t know him personally, so I don’t know why he largely acted like a caretaker, rather than a becoming a “take charge president” as Lincoln and FDR did during their own challenging times.
As to the chorus of second-class intellects and narcissistic wannabes currently in the Presidential Race – I know that there are strong leaders in the Farm Team – whether any of them will break into the big time, in time, remains to be seen.
Here is my challenge to all of you: Who do you see as potentially strong, visionary, take charge, confident leaders in the “Farm Team”. Your picks should have a history of integrity, courageous decision making for which they take responsibility, and a track record of fighting for honest, open, responsive goverance whether in the private or public sectors.
under “Yet Another Progressive Who Thinks the America Has a Parliamentary System.” The extent to which people think the President is a demi-god who can order things by decree, rather than one piece in an increasingly ungovernable system, is remarkable.
I also found this amusing:
It should be obvious by this point that most Republicans are not interested in any compromise. The only people who matter in the current setup are the Democrats and a handful of semi-moderate Republicans willing to do business. That means enacting anything requires getting center-right members of the Democratic caucus, a few reasonable Republicans, and people like Joe Lieberman on board.
Moving to the left because Republicans have moved to the right is not wise negotiation, and will not serve to get these members on board. It’s a recipe for the government doing nothing. In other words, it aligns with right-wing strategy perfectly.
Also, if you think the actions of the 111th Congress didn’t go far enough, I wonder why you single out Obama. Why not blame Congress? They’re the ones who actually developed the health care bill, the stimulus, and other policies you don’t like. How are Pelosi & Reid, along with other individual Democrats in Congress, any less incompetent than Obama here.
America with having a parlimentary system, which I take to mean that the President is not a prime minister. True. So what? I’ll give you more credit than you give me and assume that you know the President has a major role to play as the leader of his party and the head of the executive branch of government. Even if he doesn’t live in England.
Congressional Democrats are disgusted with Obama. As Elizabeth Drew writes,
So, they are disgusted with Obama. Leadership fail.
I could write another post on the 111th Congress, and another on the Senate, but why state the obvious? The GOP is apocalytically dangerous. The Senate ridiculous in a manner not easily achieved outside of Washington. Reid, in my opinion, has always been an ineffectual clown. Schumer is no lefty, but I’d back him in a heartbeat. Pelosi, who is true to Democratic values, lacks the majority she needs to act. She did pretty well with the 110th Congress.
You misunderstand my point on compromise. My point was negotiating positions, and I used the word “compromise” as the place where negotiators end up, which is some sort of middle. The GOP knows this, which is one reason why they’ve gone so far to the right. Obama starts in the wrong direction every time.
Why single out Obama? Because he deserves it! He’s selling out bedrock Democratic principles. He is undermining our party and our ideals. He’s serving our country and our party badly. And quite frankly, it’s not been said enough. He’ll be running against himself in the next election, not just the GOP nominee.
I have noticed that several progressives are not happy with Obama and Reid, but liked Pelosi when she was Speaker. Was this because she’s the only one “true to Democratic values?” No. It’s because she presided over the branch with the least resistance to shepherding legislation through.
Reid has to deal with reaching a 60% majority to get anything done. Pelosi only needed 50% + 1. Obama needs to ensure both the House and Senate enacted proposals he desired. Both Reid’s and Obama’s institutional positions are much more difficult than Pelosi’s ever was. This has nothing to do with who is true to Democratic values. It has everything to do with institutional rules.
Consider this: if there was no filibuster, the 111th Congress would have almost certainly enacted a cap and trade bill, along with a stronger stimulus and a more progressive health care bill. Maybe card check and a few other stalled progressive enactments might have joined the many other bills that the 111th Congress did manage to enact.
But they did not. And it was not because Obama was incompetent and/or a conservative plant. It was because Democrats needed 60 votes, and they only had 58 + a socialist and Joe Lieberman even at their high point (which, in any case, did not last long). Now, of course, Republicans can quite easily block anything they want by virtue of holding the House and having more than enough Senators to filibuster anything. Particularly with the recent Tea Party infusion in the Republicans’ ranks, they WILL block anything they don’t like, and will refuse to compromise no matter what position Obama takes. They want Obama out of office more than they want any particular policy outcome.
If Obama was more liberal and/or had more “leadership skills”, these facts wouldn’t change. If there was no filibuster, perhaps progressives would be very happy about the size of the stimulus, the health care bill, card check, etc. But the fact the filibuster exists and a radical Republican Party is willing to use it for everything has nothing to do with Obama’s competence or lack thereof.
The next step is to ask why. Pelosi didn’t compromise at the first sign of resistance. She was not afraid to use any maneuver she could think of to keep everyone in line. The Republicans knew not to mess with her — that’s why they tried so hard to get rid of her. Reid and Obama will fold like Superman on laundry day. Progressives are enamored with Pelosi because she gets results and doesn’t back down easily — and those two factors reinforce each other.
Case in point — the bs vote on Republican debt ceiling package. Not a single Democrat voted for it. Perfect caucus unity — something Reid has never been able to perfect and something undermined by Obama regularly. She took away any bipartisan cover, and kept everyone on board. Reid and Obama can’t or won’t do that. That’s why I like Pelosi.
I like Pelosi for the same reasons why you like Pelosi. She is excellent at determining whip counts and getting all of her members in line. Given that there are still Blue Dogs in the caucus — and if Democrats regain the majority in the future, it’s likely there will be more — this is indeed a remarkable feat.
Nevertheless, your comment does not address the question regarding why there was less resistance in the House. It was not because Pelosi didn’t back down and Reid and Obama did. It was because Pelosi only needed 50%+1. Indeed, if she needed 60% to pass anything, she would have backed down and compromised if she was serious about passing legislation. That’s the only reason Pelosi looks different than Reid and Obama. She had no need to compromise because the institutional rules gave her much more power in her chamber.
That’s the key difference. It has much less to do with “leadership” and much more to do with institutional rules. The Republicans and conservative Democrats were as resistant to progressive policy ideas in the House as in the Senate. This resistance was overcome not because Pelosi refused to compromise but because they did not have the tools a minority of Senators have to slow down or kill legislation.
Reid didn’t need 60% to pass anything. The Republicans didn’t think so when they ruled the Senate … and were ready to go to 50% and throw out the rule over something far less significant than raising American access to health care or keeping our economy intact. No, not only did Reid accept this somewhat byzantine practice, he refused to even consider eliminating or even reforming it. Reid and Obama start negotiations by giving the other side half of what they want. That’s not leadership.
Of course Pelosi would have backed down and compromised. You keep making this point while overlooking the very definition of “compromise”.
If two people are haggling over the price of a widget in an open marketplace and a fair price is $25 then perhaps the buyer starts by asking for $20, the seller asks for $30, they haggle and meet somewhere around $25.
Obama starts by asking for $25 and then is mystified when he ends up paying $28.
I would say that if the fair price for a widget were $25 Obama the buyer would offer to pay $28 while Obama the seller would let you have it for $22, both BEFORE you even opened your mouth.
Or at least used reconciliation more aggressively. Making the Senate less aristocratic and more democratic by breaking the unconstitutional reign of the current super-majority would have helped the party over the long run too. That would have been a bit of leadership. In other words, your argument is only accurate in a very narrow sense, and only if one disregards more fundamental “change” (to draw from Obama’s campaign slogan).
How is my argument only accurate in “a very narrow sense”? I agree with you that the filibuster ought to be done away with (along with Senatorial holds), and/or reconciliation used more aggressively. But these are legislative rules, not executive rules. Obama has nothing to do with them. How in the world can Obama be blamed for the Senate not reforming its own rules?
opinions I don’t actually have and responding to points I haven’t already made. I take your points and generally agree with them, but you’re talking procedures, not politics.
You can read and respond to my previous comment or my post, if you want to know what I’m talking about.
You are pretty clear that you are arguing that you are disappointed in Obama’s actions — mainly because he is “incompetent” and because he is a “terrible Democrat.”
I responded by arguing that Obama is neither incompetent nor a terrible Democrat, but rather that what you seem to be criticizing Obama about has much more to do with broken procedures rather than his personal failings. Obviously we disagree about the substance here, but my comments are a direct response to your post.
Not in Obama. I haven’t have much faith in him.
Incompetent? No question in my mind.
What I don’t think you paid sufficient attention to was the direct evidence I provided. You accused me of taking Congress at its word (I was actually taking a reporter at her word), when ironically, all you offered was your unsupported opinion.
We can get into it in my next post, which will characterize Obama’s personality and thinking.
I’m surprised you take the words of the congressmen at face value. They have an interest in shifting blame for policy failures off of themselves, after all.
If Obama is indeed incompetent and/or a fake Democrat, then why haven’t the Democrats in Congress put card-check, cap + trade, and a bigger stimulus on the President’s desk and see what he does. They could have done this regardless of Obama’s incompetence, right? If he vetoes these, then I agree — he is a fake Democrat. But he never got a chance to sign these into law. Why? Congress never enacted them. And why didn’t they do that?
The answer should be obvious, and it has nothing to do with the incompetence of Obama, Reid, or any other Democrat.
(Latin, short for ibidem, meaning the same place) is the term used to provide an endnote or footnote citation or reference for a source that was cited in the preceding endnote or footnote. It is similar in meaning to idem (meaning something that has been mentioned previously; the same), abbreviated Id., which is commonly used in legal citation.[1] To find the ibid. source, one must look at the reference preceding it.
The reason they are so intractable at the moment is perhaps because they have seen it is a working strategy with the current administration.
The reason Republicans are so intractable is because they see pushing the U.S. into economic catastrophe as helping them take out Obama in 2012. Anything Congress enacts now that helps the economy or the jobs situation will help Obama. Ergo, they will not compromise on anything.
That too has nothing to do with Presidential “leadership” or competence. It has everything to do with the fact that one of the two major parties in the U.S. has gone completely off the rails.
The House GOP isn’t one person, it’s hundreds of people, each with a personal mix of strengths and weaknesses. There are lots of past examples of strong presidents who bent Congress to their will, even without control of the body. But when they form up in a pack and smell blood, then they can indeed become formidable, and that appears to be the case at the moment, and the reason for that is that they have had a lot of success hunting this administration.
At the heart of it, I suppose we just have a different outlook on how the power of the presidency. You suggest that the President can make a major difference in the direction of domestic policy by, among other things, “bending Congress to their will.”
I do not deny that the President can make some difference in domestic policy, especially by setting the broad outlines of an agenda in which Congress works, but I also think the ability of the President to “bend Congress to their will” is vastly overrated. I think it’s especially true now — when both parties have become much more ideologically homogeneous and the Senate’s institutional rules have been used and abused much more frequently — but it’s always been true. Even Lyndon Johnson got very frustrated when he realized as President that Senators no longer listened to him the way they did when he was Senate Majority Leader.
The major difference between FDR and Johnson on the one hand and Obama on the other is that the first two Presidents had massive Democratic majorities in Congress. Obama had a strong majority (though not 60% in the Senate) for a few months of the 111th Congress, and this ended up being the most productive legislative period since the 89th (during Johnson).
Since Republicans gained their 41st vote in the Senate and especially since they’ve taken over the House, however, the pace of legislation has crawled to a near stand-still; one of the most “do-nothing” Congresses in decades. Did this happen because Obama failed to show leadership? No, it’s because Republicans have used their new institutional tools available to them to gum up the works entirely.
Very few Republicans have any incentive to work with Obama. If Republicans from conservative districts work with him, they will be challenged, probably successfully, in primaries. Republicans from swing districts should be more willing to work with Obama, but after 2010 most of these swing districts are occupied by Tea Party ideologues who have no personal incentive to give an inch. Other than to save the country, which few of them care about, Republicans have little reason to help the economy, which would only help Obama at the expense of their own presidential candidates.
So who of the Republicans is Obama supposed to “bend to meet his will”?
Sure, Obama is a disappointment for anybody who evaluated him on his rhetoric rather than his record. And as hoya says, he’s a disappointment for anybody unaware of the shrinking restrictions that still exist on presidential action. Fact is, Obama has spent most of his career pursuing the non-existent reasonable middle ground that he, David Brooks, and a few other Fantasyland Pundits still think should be the fount of all policy.
Obama could have assessed the situation for what it is — a polarization between a small, well-organized and -financed minority and a larger, almost institutionally disorganized majority. Obama could have gone hard at the almost unprecedented opportunity that existed from 2009-11 when the Democratic Party had a large degree of control over the federal government.
But that would have expected a leadership from Obama equal to that of Franklin Roosevelt. And I don’t think it’s fair to label somebody a huge failure for not having that extraordinary leadership. The Obama presidency was and still to some extent is a sorely missed opportunity and hopefully a lesson for anybody who expects greatness without fully exploring a candidate’s actual accomplishments, but a tragic failure? I don’t think so.
Obama is operating with a government that is approaching an epic fail. No question. No question it’s the craziness of the GOP and a generally ineffectual Democratic Party that has that has brought us to the brink.
I wasn’t a big Obama fan. I voted for and supported Clinton and took a ration of crap for it on BMG. I was enthusiastic about him as a nominee, however.
Obama is failing, not at being extraordinary, but at Politics 101, which goes like this: 1) Do what’s best for the country 2) Do what’s best for your Party 3) Do what’s best for your political career. He may not know better or be able to overcome the GOP, but Obama’s not doing what’s best for the country, the party, or himself.
“Obama is operating with a government that is approaching an epic fail. No question. ”
I am not, and never have been a strident defender of Obama. However…
Unemployment has gone down, GDP has gone up. In foreign policy, our relations with Russia, Venezuela, and China are better than they’ve been in years. He is playing the Arab Spring perfectly. Bin Laden’s dead and terrorism has not trouble the US since he took office. Aside from the fact that we’re not recovering from the Great Recession as quickly as we could have (with a different Congress), he’s not a Dubya-style epic failure.
I still maintain that it’s a disappointment, but I guess I reserve the term failure for making things worse, not a lack of making things better as quickly as I’d like.
It is appearing increasingly likely that Obama will win re-election barring some economic catastrophe.
We are on the brink, however.
Employment is not improving significantly, and the GDP is not growing enough to make a difference. See this chart: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/30/warped-discourse-again. Here in Massachusetts we have yet to make the cuts that the rest of the country is experiencing.
In terms of epic fail, see Stiglitz http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stiglitz140/English. I’m not saying that Obama caused an epic fail of our government. The Republican Party has brought us to the brink. Obama’s fault is in enabling them. You can’t stop an alcoholic from taking a drink, but you certainly can resist handing them the bottle.
Your comments are well said, in my opinion, but Mark deserves more credit for his argument, I also think, since it is coming several years into Obama’s administration. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. In other words, it is not unreasonable to expect better performance this far in.
Consider this thought experiment. We managed to resurrect FDR prior to the 2008 elections and he won the nomination and the election.
It’s now three years into his term. Imagine everything else is the same (the same partisan numbers in Congress this whole time, the rise of the Tea Party, etc.), with the exception that FDR is president. How would policy look different than what actually was enacted by the 111th/112th Congresses? What would have been enacted that wasn’t, and why?
FDR’s first term was characterized by attempts at sweeping change, from the people he brought to Washington to the policies he adopted. This generated resistance, which he confronted rather than trying to placate, generally speaking. He pushed even harder in his second term. In the same spirit, Obama might have put the largest banks under FDIC-style reorganization, doubled the stimulus, stayed true to his public option campaign promises, and eliminated the filibuster rules or, as I said in another comment, at least used reconciliation to put through his economic program and health care reform in the first 30 days of his administration. Instead of fearing and appeasing the News Corp.-led pushback, he would have used it to bind together and energize the overwhelming majority of the country that elected him.
…The sweeping change was from a complete and widespread failure of the ENTIRE banking system (remember the bank holiday where the entirety of the countries banks were shut down for several days), unemployment greater than 20% and that other issue of old folks in poverty dying by the bucketful.
FDR had one advantage that Obama does not have: demonstrable and vivid examples of pain and suffering in the lives of people who voted for him. FDR had little choice but to implement that sweeping change, and if he didn’t more people would have died. Obama doesn’t have the impetus of that urgency behind him.
about progressives imagining America as a parliamentary system, this comment is the sort of thing I had in mind:
This sort of language is very common, unfortunately. “Obama” should do this, or “Obama” should do that. Of course, “Obama” cannot put the largest banks under FDIC-syle reorganization or double the stimulus. For better or worse, these policies require the consent of the House and Senate. And not just simple majorities, but 60% in the Senate.
(And, of course, Obama most certainly cannot “eliminate the filibuster rules.” Nor can he use reconciliation to ram his program through. These are Senate legislative rules, completely under the jurisdiction of the Senate alone).
I knew I’d get a ration of crap from people, but I expected more people to respond to what I actually said, not what they wanted me to have said.
I also put a ton of sourcing in there and get told to forget politics and go to the beach.
Furrfu…
Here it is — I apologize.
It was late, I shouldn’t have been online.
But Mark, I never questioned your sourcing. I complained about your having it both ways. You cite issues with Obama, but then you say he’s vulnerable. It’s possible in theory to worry about both those things (Pataki would be worse), but that’s not the case you made.
The beach would do us ALL some good. It is July after all. Peace.
I’m not always judicious in what I say and have even had comments deleted on occasion.
It’s sort of a paradox, writing what I think and supporting my party. Maybe that’s where the confusion comes in.
I’ll vote for Obama. My criticism shouldn’t be confused with my unenthusiastic support. We can have a Obama who IMHO sucks, or a GOP enslaved to destructive, half-baked ideas. I’ll take Obama. But I want him to do a better job.
To my mind, the main failure has been refusing to set the terms of the debate. A President at once more factual and more partisan would have cried out how the stimulus was inadequate and that it was inadequate because of the GOP. Had it been adequate we wouldn’t be looking at such steep unemployment. Had Obama not said it was adequate, Democrats could run against the GOP on that basis. Instead, according to him, the stimulus was just the right size and so the party that’s to blame can’t be blamed.
[insert pink centered dot here]
I’m continually amused at how Scott Brown wants to revisit the 2010 Special Election. In a sense, Obama is stuck in the 2008 election. McCain’s response to the economy was hysterical, ill-considered, partisan, and wrong. It was enough for Obama to project being the most reasonable person around.
He’s still trying to do that. He’s still trying to be the most reasonable person around. He is still running the 2008 campaign.
That, apparently, means he is not going to challenge received opinion. If he were to challenge conventional wisdom, he’d risk no longer appearing so reasonable.
Among the progressive criticisms of Obama, your argument makes by far the most sense. Much of the progressive criticism of Obama ought instead be placed instead on broken institutional rules, not presidential leadership.
However, as you point out, one area the President can make more of a difference is by bringing a partisan argument directly to the people and forthrightly attacking Congress. Call this the Harry Truman strategy. For strategic reasons (keeping independents in his column in 2012), Obama has decided against this, instead opting for the “let’s look reasonable and non-partisan” strategy. It may end up being a bad decision for his personally — we’ll see in 2012. But I’d agree that wielding a sharper partisan sword in this debate might help swing the American public against the Republicans.
(I should mention that, oddly enough, the original diarist seems to be criticizing Obama for actually attempting to do this. Among other things, the Administration used Twitter to try and put pressure on Congress. I fail to see why this is evidence of a lack of leadership — indeed, Obama should be doing more, not less, of this.)
From the beginning “the left” gave him little in the way of a honeymoon: the echoes of the inauguration were barely stilled before Hamsher at FireDogLake and Bowers at the OpenLeft and many others were lighting into him daily. The Huffington Post merely piled on, and anyone on the left who tried to defend him there were quickly buried under a stinking pile of poutrage and petulance. The merest whiff of un-liberal thought would spark a disproportionate recoil from some leftist snot who thought they alone held the key to utopia.
Nor is it particular to Obama. I’ve heard it all before: 10 seconds after Carter got the nomination in 1980 all I heard was how much better we’d be if Ted Kennedy had got the nomination; 5 seconds after Gore got the nomination 2000, all I heard was how much better off we’d have been with Bradley; in 2004, the left wholesale abandoned the newly minted nominee John Kerry because he wasn’t Wes Clark or Howard Dean. In 2008 the watchword was ‘PUMA”, which (in case you don’t remember) stood for “Party Unity My Ass”, which is a strange sentiment, if you think about it, since you can’t walk away from a party unity that has never existed in the first place…
I’ve heard this all my life. Liberals have no constancy. They are always looking at what could have been better, what might have been, and why can’t it be perfect. Furthermore, they strenuously work to make the perfect the enemy of the good: denying, as YOU are right now, any benefit to the present situation and instead wallow in doom and gloom by simultaneously mythologizing the past (why can’t Obama be like FDR?) and positing a perfect future (2012 will be so much better when we get a real Democrat in the white house).
And, frankly, it is the liberal inconstancy, this supreme willingness to be unhappy and to look for the cloud in every type of lining, this recondite pessimism… that turns people off. I’ve long considered myself liberal in ideology but have been equally long in my distaste for many liberals themselves: they go from zero to petulant in no time at all, and often for reasons that, to an adult, look childish.
I thought the comparison was most apt. Obama knows his history. Every progressive in office has always faced vitriol and backstabbing from progressives who’ve never been in office. FDR was pilloried for selling out African Americans. Truman taken to the woodshed for Korea and failure to get universal health care. LBJ, perhaps the most openly liberal POTUS we’ve ever had (or are likely to have) was daily crucified for not being either JFK or RFK.
The left never had his back. They made whiny demands and pissed on him from some imagined moral high ground. Why should he even acknowledge them when they only whine incessantly about how imperfect things are…
I can relate to some what you’re sayying here, petr. I’m still waiting for Jane Hamsher to admit she was completely wrong about the healthcare bill. She was right that there was “an understanding” with pharma (that, in my opinion, should not have existed), but she kept arguing that there was a quid pro quo involving the 2010 elections. When it emerged almost immediately after the bill’s passage that there was no deal (hello, Chamber?), she never backtracked on her theory as far as I know.
That said, some of what you knock the left for, never being satisfied, I would pitch as praise. We never should be satisfied. We could probably be quicker with praise, but the nature of political discourse is that you don’t get much time on the mic.
The left had Obama’s back in 2008 in a huge way, and hence the huge margin. I’d argue that it was the left wing of the party that gave him the nomination by deciding Hillary wouldn’t do (personally I stand by that), so Obama was preferable. And certainly, saying “We can do better” while sharing the stage with a Clinton was a pretty direct appeal to the left.
Re: PUMA, let’s not forget that that was disgruntled Clinton supporters (and a pretty small group that exploited a bored press). Most Clinton supporters got on board quickly, as Obama supporters would have if she won.
Finally, you rehash some White House hippie-punching as evidence that the left is wrong. First, the White House should not alienate its own supporters; second, it did so as a strategy to look more moderate (the Goldilocks strategy — Obama is just right, not too left not too Republican). Third and fourth and most important, the 2008 election represented, to me and others, our final emergence from the woods of being called traitors. To see Obama invoke such (dehumanization is too strong maybe — delegitimization?) of a group of Americans is really painful. I am still on board, but if anyone finds that unforgivable, well, they’re right, and I’m not going to talk them out of it. Obama could have changed that, and helped to undo some of the damage of the Bush years. Instead he continued it. I get that his frustration is genuine (it looks like it, anyway), but taking it out on us was not acceptable. Liberals are people too.
… to nurture dis-satisfaction in service to politics and so feed your ambitions in that manner, and quite another thing to turn on your allies, ferociously, at the fist hint of dissatisfaction.
I get what you are saying. I was never ‘satisfied’ with Clinton but I never felt the need to turn that dissatisfaction into visceral fantasies of betrayal and calumny.
when I contributed funds I’d dearly like back to his campaign, held fund-raisers for him, and traveled on my own dime to four swing states to campaign for him.
It’s true I have not “had his back” too much since then. So I’m conceding all this is my fault.
It’s my fault Obama appointed an entirely Rubinite economic team, and started his adminstration by inviting the House GOP (which at the time had 179 members and was not needed to pass the bill) over to whittle down an already-insufficient stimulus. People say he couldn’t get it through the Senate without these concessions. I do not believe that for a moment. The guy had the public behind him and the GOP was in tatters. If he’d used that he’d have gotten one of the Maine senators or Specter to cave on the filibuster. I’d love to have seen how long they’d have held out, in February 2009, on blocking rescue legislation on a Senate procedural technicality. If he’d wanted to, Obama could have used the bully pulpit to bring the wrath of God down on the left-most GOP Senators. He only needed one!
Failure to do so, and pass an adequate recovery bill, was the original, and most important sin, of this Administration. Obama bargained away, quite unnecessarily, his best (only?) chance to restore employment in a meaningful way before the 2010 elections. And we all paid the price last November. I voted Dem, but all those low-info swing voters out there didn’t. They rejected the party in power because the economy stunk.
It’s my fault Larry Summers compounded this crime against good politics, and good policy, when he went on TV to defend AIG bonuses and Tim Geithner let banks that weren’t healthy, despite our massive transfer of funds with no strings attached, leave TARP so their executives wouldn’t have to run their obscene pay packages past Ken Feinberg.
It’s my fault Obama took single payer and the public option, the health care proposals Americans actually liked and which would actually begin to solve our problems, off the table. I’m the one who told him to push for a bill that essentially tells the people who couldn’t afford private insurance to just go buy it or pay a fine. And it was me who made sure there were no meaningful mechanisms in that bill to lower premium costs.
I was also to blame for Obama’s caving on the Bush tax cuts, and for the fact (ably pointed out by Rep. Conyers) that it was Barack Obama who pushed SS, Medicare, Medicaid cuts. My fault, because I did not have his back, that Obama wanted MORE slashed from the federal budget in what is still a recession for most Americans. Thanks to this “deal” it soon may become a second recession in technical terms as well.
It’s my fault Obama’s fervently desired “Grand Bargain,” and his recently negotiated “Moyen Bargain,” completely eviscerate any political advantage Democrats had from Paul Ryan’s plan to eliminate Medicare. Hard to campaign as the defenders of Medicare and SS now.
It’s my fault the Obama administration, every time out, has started negotiations not by overreaching and then pretending to “compromise,” but by making as a first offer what was until recently the GOP position. It’s my fault that, every time there’s been a choice, Obama has gone with the GOP and most conservative Democrats, telling his own party’s base to suck it up.
Here’s how it works: I have the back of those who have my back, and that of the millions of Americans who desperately needed some of the “hope” and “change” this fraud was selling. I don’t have the back of those who don’t have my back.
Turns out the “change” was in the direction of dismantling the New Deal. But I’m sure the policy outcomes would be better if I’d only had his back.
I could see your point if it were the “perfect being the enemy of the good.” But it’s not. Because Obama is not starting out in a “perfect” place and settling for “good.” He’s starting every negotiation in a lousy place and conceding every single thing he claims is a line in the sand. The results are not “good” policy or “good” politics. They ensure continued economic struggle and may well spell the end of Obama’s own presidency in 2012. People don’t vote for sellouts or wimps, and they don’t vote for Presidents who have had four years to improve the economy but failed miserably, except as concerns the top 2 percent, who are doing just fine. Obama, as he has turned out to be, or some lunatic like Bachmann. It’s pathetic it’s come to this.
If Obama said “I want single payer” that would accomplish NOTHING. He has stated on the record that he thinks single payer would be nice, after all. Simply stating your preferences doesn’t actually accomplish anything. You actually need leverage, and the President does not have that.
Obama doesn’t have leverage for one very simple reason: if Republicans walk away from the table, they win. Crippling the government appeals to their anti-government base, and killing the economy is generally deemed to benefit the Republicans in 2012. Similarly, Republicans are terrified that if they compromise even a little, they’ll be murdered by the Tea Party. Some of that’s irrational, but negotiators don’t bargain based on what is good for them, but based on what they think is good for them. So letting the world burn is a very favorable option for the Republicans, which means in order to get Republicans to choose something else, we need to give them a lot in exchange. And this dynamic applies to Republicans (and to a lesser extent conservative Democrats) in general. If they do nothing, the status quo is preserved, and by definition conservatives kinda like the status quo.
I refuse to believe the GOP holds all the cards. To answer my own question the President needs to make their position politically toxic. The President has the bully pulpit. He can and should barnstorm the country and activate his base and get the people to flood Congress with correspondence favoring his preferences. You’re correct that just saying he favors single-payer and leaving it at that won’t accomplish much, but if he made the case day after day on both moral and fiscal grounds he could rally the country and put the GOP on the defensive.
Honestly, I’m deeply skeptical of the whole idea of political tactics. Politics is driven by broad social forces, and political change can only come from the gradual change of those underlying factors that drive elections. The idea that even very powerful people can just burst in and start twisting elbows and get anything more than a few extra votes here or there seems naive.
The bully pulpit is overrated. Most people won’t follow politics and those who do already have a dog in the fight. And all politicians have access to the media. The President just has the opportunity to get better time slots. But most people still don’t pay that much attention to politics, so his reach is still very limited. The President simply does not have the ability to rally the country.
Now, the President can certainly “activate his base,” (to an extent) and since most people don’t write to their representatives it doesn’t take a lot to flood their mailboxes. Certainly that counts for something, and Obama should do that. (I mean, he already does, that’s kind of half of what OfA does and he also mentioned it in his speech the other night, but he could probably up the ante.) But all letters do is that they make politicians slightly uncomfortable that their constituents might not vote for them in the general election, and on the really important issues, there are major forces at work.
Are we supposed to despair that Obama is a closet Republican, or fret that George Pataki (WHO? Three governors ago?) is going to beat him?
Take a break from politics and hit the beach. I took a month off from blogging, it did me wonders.
of circumstances. Here’s Time: