Some advice for President Obama
by Greg Krehbiel on 21 January 2013
Obama’s first term was probably the most partisan I have seen in my life. That’s partly his fault, because he is a very partisan Democrat, but it’s not entirely his fault.
To some extent I believe the mess right now is the necessary consequence of the competing visions of the left and the right. They will continue to get further and further apart, and get nastier and nastier about it.
Obama played to the worst of it. The Reid / Pelosi / Obama axis of his first two years was ridiculously partisan, which resulted in the Tea Party movement and in Democrats losing the House.
I’m not talking about what’s right or wrong, about who has the better vision, about whose policies make more sense or will do more good. I’m talking about how those policies play with the American people. Measured in that way, Obama has been way too partisan, and it’s partly his fault that we have a dysfunctional Congress.
He is supposed to lead and stand above all the partisanship. He has failed at that.
Even with our divided Congress, there are plenty of things that can actually get done, but the only way to do that is to play to the center.
The campaign is over now. Obama doesn’t have to run again — ever, thank God. So now he can be an adult and work towards things that can actually pass and actually do some good.
-- 2013-01-21 » Greg Krehbiel
21 January 2013 @ 12:39 pm
we’d likely only go round and round on this issue, but i couldn’t disagree more with this statement:
Obama played to the worst of it. The Reid / Pelosi / Obama axis of his first two years was ridiculously partisan, which resulted in the Tea Party movement and in Democrats losing the House.
pentamom alluded perhaps, to this on another thread here; but i think that Obama for many of us progressives, was entirely too BIPARTISAN to the point of needless capitulation – and THAT is why the TP made such gains in 2010 … because the left largely felt betrayed and disillusioned, and stayed home instead of voting.
21 January 2013 @ 12:58 pm
You’re certainly right that Obama didn’t go as far to the left as some leftists wanted him to. But that’s no surprise. No president ever goes as far to either side as the partisans want him to.
But when it comes to bipartisanship, there are facts to be consulted. How many Republicans voted for Obamacare? How many voted for Dodd-Frank?
The Democrats rammed things through without any support from Republicans. That is not bipartisan.
21 January 2013 @ 1:45 pm
Obama never approached within seeing distance of “the left.”
The health care proposal he signed was the Heritage Foundation’s proposal in 1994. He insisted on trying to work with the right even after it became clear that they would oppose their own ideas if Obama expressed agreement with them. He failed to investigate allegations of torture under the Bush administration, making him a war criminal under the Convention Against Torture. He continued the unconstitutional programs begun under Bush, surrounded himself with supply-siders,…….
And the Tea Party was not a public reaction to Obama. It was entirely an orchestrated program, financed from the beginning by a few plutocrats. In fact, it was a reaction to Bush, not Obama, that sparked the whole thing. Wingnut Rick Santelli started spouting about the Bush bank bailout in Feb. 2009, well before any Obama initiatives could have taken effect.
Funny thing is, I remember seeing the video of that hysterical screed, in which he referred to the Wall Street stock traders he was surrounded by (in was recorded on the floor of the stock exchange) as “ordinary Americans.” Really? I’ll be the lowest paid person on screen pays their nanny more than the median US income.
And that’s the whole issue. It’s the top 0.5% seizing control, with the willing compliance of the people they are ripping off. But just make sure those two guys can’t hold hands in public! That’s the important thing, right?
21 January 2013 @ 1:58 pm
It all depends on how you define “the left.” If you define it by your own personal opinions, … okay. But who cares? Why should the rest of us adopt your definition?
If you define it by anything like objective criteria — i.e., how his policies compare with the population — then Obama was very far to the left before he become president, and not as strongly to the left after he became president.
The bottom line is that executives have to get things done. On that measure he mostly failed, and on the things where he succeeded, he was not “bipartisan” in any meaningful sense of that word.
You can make all kinds of excuses about his performance — about how the Republicans wouldn’t have gone along with anything, etc. etc., — whatever. But those are just excuses.
By any objective measurement, he was very far from bipartisan.
21 January 2013 @ 3:12 pm
I think we’re seeing a new era in politics, and it is certainly the most partisan I have ever seen.
It seems to me that in the past, you could line up support from someone on the other side by offering various goodies for their constituencies, like road projects and military installations and dams and bridges and stuff like that. Very few people seem to care that one of the costs of bipartisanship was an increasing debt and deficit.
These days, it is getting harder to continue those tactics.
I think that Obama’s best hope to get things done in his second term is to continue to use Joe Biden. My perception is that he does not enjoy working across the aisle as much as Joe Biden does.
If I could wave a magic wand, I take it back radiant new political party which would identify the most partisan members of Congress on both sides, and spend enough money to retire them, or bribe them into retiring or something.I recognize that elections have consequences. However, I personally have zero elected representatives who appreciate my views. None of my federal or state representatives share my point of view. I think it would be a great step towards bipartisanship cooperation if we could read incentives for each elected representative to at least occasionally take the point of view of the millions of unrepresented people in their districts. If you are a progressive, fine. That probably means that 55 to 70% of the people in your districts are progressive. But that doesn’t mean that you should vote 100% of the time for aggressive issues. Maybe it might make sense for you to vote 10 or 20% of the time for other issues, providing at least some voice to be effectively disenfranchised in your districts.
21 January 2013 @ 3:44 pm
How can bipartisanship be asked of him when in perpetuity, as John so well put it, He insisted on trying to work with the right even after it became clear that they would oppose their own ideas if Obama expressed agreement with them.
The examples are as significant as they are numerous; I know that I really need not even take the effort to reference them here. Yet, you hold Obama to such a higher level of account? How can one come to an agreement with someone who so readily doesn’t simply move the goalpost, but buries it underground?
21 January 2013 @ 3:49 pm
Ugh… Mobile device err… Extended italics not intentional.
21 January 2013 @ 3:57 pm
You expect us to believe what a politician says?
So — he insisted on working across the aisle? Really? How hard did he insist, because it didn’t work out that way.
It seems far more plausible to me that he was merely giving lip service to bipartisanship.
21 January 2013 @ 4:30 pm
Well, the voting record is clear… Conjecture on his character much less so. Is the issue really that he may or may not have insisted vehemently.enough, or that his opposition was often nonsensical and oddly counterproductive? I’d think the latter.
21 January 2013 @ 4:55 pm
There certainly is an element of nobody getting along anymore, which is why I say the partisanship of his administration is not entirely his fault. But I don’t think he even tried very hard.
And he’s not trying very hard now. His inaugural address pushed a clearly liberal agenda. That’s not my opinion, that’s what several different news sources say.
21 January 2013 @ 7:29 pm
I’ll agree with John on one thing, the Tea Party was a reaction to Bush and where the Republican party had been going. The Tea Party was full of Republicans who felt like they had no home and fiscal responsibility was a thing of the past.
I view the Tea Party kinda like Ross Perot, it ended up losing the presidency for the Republicans because they were now a divided bunch. Unfortunately nothing like the internal revolution of 1994 has occurred yet. Those Republicans for all their faults, were serious about their principles but also much more willing to work to find compromises with Clinton.
22 January 2013 @ 9:33 am
well said, Ken.
23 January 2013 @ 10:31 pm
Old Crowhill denizen here, looking in. What most interested me was this line Greg:
>They will continue to get further and further apart, and get nastier and nastier about it.
I completely agree. What interests me most is trying to envision the endgame of this unhealthy dynamic. It is a little scary to contemplate. But this widening of the gyre (sorry, probably grossly abusing Yeats here) certainly cannot go on forever. How is it going to end up? Joe
24 January 2013 @ 8:48 am
Hi Joe.
I don’t know how it will end. I hope there is some sort of compromise solution, but sometimes both sides are so strident that I fear it will end with an actual split. And sometimes I think that might even be best — if, for example, Texas were to secede.