A global governance problem?
by Greg Krehbiel on 4 March 2013
I’m wondering if we’re starting to experience a global governance problem. There’s talk that “ability to govern” should be a key skill of the new pope. The last couple seem to have been unable to control the Vatican.
We’re also watching a pretty obvious failure of governance in the United States. Obama is not a good leader (certainly not the “uniter” we were promised), and Congress is becoming a bad joke.
It seems likely to me — or at least not unlikely — that modern systems are becoming so complex that a very specific set of skills are required to govern them. It also seems likely to me that a popular vote is not the right way to pick such a person.
Would it make any sense to pick the CEO of McDonald’s or Google by a popular vote?
Perhaps no one can govern because the left and the right are further and further apart, and there really is no middle ground that can gain enough support.
Obama seems to believe that. He thinks the only way to govern is with an all Democrat government. According to a Washington Post blog post …
This confirms what Republicans have been saying (despite liberal pundits’ scoffing): The president is interested in breaking the back of the opposition not accommodating or passing centrist legislation.
Obama is “engaged in bare-knuckle campaigning, not governing, when he engages in faux negotiations and goes around the country to hammer Republicans.”
Are we doomed to a choice between a dysfunctional government or an extremely partisan one?
-- 2013-03-04 » Greg Krehbiel
4 March 2013 @ 7:34 pm
Right. Because that evil Obama forces Republicans to oppose their own policies, then gets blamed for coming up with bad ideas that were suggested by Republicans 4 years before he was elected?
4 March 2013 @ 7:40 pm
BTW, did you notice that the Post blog article you linked to asserts a strategy on the part of Obama, then “substantiates” it by quoting Republicans? Pretty darned sloppy, don’t you think?
Look at the actual record. Obama has suggested Republican ideas, and had them rejected. The Tea Partiers only know how to disagree with Obama. They have no policies of their own, except to dismantle government itself.
4 March 2013 @ 8:34 pm
John, do you really think Obama has been proposing Republican policies? Seriously?
4 March 2013 @ 9:50 pm
John,
Obama proposing Republican ideas? Put down the beer and walk away! The man can’t handle his beer!
5 March 2013 @ 9:11 am
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/frame_game/2012/11/obama_the_moderate_republican_what_the_2012_election_should_teach_the_gop.html
5 March 2013 @ 9:37 am
Okay, I agree that Obama isn’t as far to the left as some people want to make him. But saying he’s a moderate is just silly.
From Root’s article …
>By and large, Obama’s instincts are the instincts of a moderate Republican.
Sure. Go read almost every reaction to his state of the union. It was just about unanimously called a radical leftist agenda.
Obama’s “instincts” are to run a never-ending campaign, because that’s the only thing he’s good at.
>Once the economy began to revive, Obama offered a $4-trillion debt reduction framework …
Nonsense. Obama “offers” all kinds of things and then goes back on them. The sequester is a recent example. It was his idea in the first place, and now he’s blaming Republicans for it. His bad-faith-dealing is also one of his “instincts.”
That the individual mandate was also proposed by Republicans does not make it a “Republican proposal” any more than the existence of pro-life Democrats or pro-gun Democrats makes either of those things “Democratic proposals.”
It is also true that Obama has not been as radical about troop reductions in Iraq and Afghanistan as he promised in his campaign. (When will we learn to quit listening to what politicians promise?) In that respect he has moved towards the middle.
Look at his Supreme Court nominations. Look at his energy policies (which he calls “all of the above,” which is a lie). Look at his complete reluctance to place any limits on entitlements.
He is less liberal in action than he is in talk. I’ll grant you that. But he is certainly no moderate.
5 March 2013 @ 9:49 am
Look. Opposing abortion is a “Democrat proposal.”
Democrats for Life
So is opposition to gun control!
Democrats for Gun Ownership
And let’s call everything the blue dog Democrats do a “Democratic proposal.”
5 March 2013 @ 11:12 am
I’m not sure it is helpful to argue whether President Obama is liberal or moderate, especially if you put any credence whatsoever in the speeches he makes and the words he chooses. I think the big question yet to be answered is whether or not he is a fascist.
And maybe he simply doesn’t fit into traditional political definitions. Maybe he is creating a new category of political and economic power and thought, which will be described in new terms.
5 March 2013 @ 6:13 pm
Greg, you ensconce in that SOTU … when in every instance throughout any presidency, it’s always just blitherings. They appease their bases, who then … don’t pay any attention to what gets actually enacted, in any relevant detail.
Your comment about his campaigning, seemes a bit baseless … you’re usually pretty good about deploying the ‘IMO’ tag …
The comment on the origins of the sequester are completely intellectually dishonest … please be mindful that the word was never even evoked outside of the debt ceiling/hostage idiocy advanced by the republicans in congress…
In 2011, for the first time in American history, the entirety of the congressional Republican caucus held the debt ceiling hostage. GOP leaders presented the White House with a non-negotiable ransom note: give Republicans over $2 trillion in debt reduction or GOP lawmakers would crash the economy on purpose.
Obama agreed to negotiate, and accepted over $1 trillion in spending cuts, in exchange for literally no revenue at all. Republicans said this was insufficient, and demanded more than $1 trillion in additional savings — and if the president refused, they’d crash the economy on purpose.
Ultimately, policymakers agreed they needed more time to negotiate additional debt-reduction measures, so they created a “super-committee” that would work on a bipartisan deal. That, of course, failed, when the panel’s GOP members refused to compromise.
But policymakers, assuming the super-committee would probably not work out, had a back-up plan widely referred to as ‘the sequester.’ The idea was to force both sides to the negotiating table — a sword of Damocles hanging over Washington’s head that would be so severe, Democrats and Republicans would have a strong incentive to strike a deal to avoid the drastic consequences……………
To label that an obama ‘instinct’ … IMO you’re not being fair.
If an individual mandate is actually created and formally proposed by republicans, uh … yeah … that makes it a republican proposal. You should be mindful that several senators (hatch, chafee, grassley, lugar, etc) and even the republican house speaker (newt), backed formal proposals they didn’t just create, glee clubs.
Certainly groups of democrats have formed, generally in red states, in efforts to get even a moderate (pun intended) chance at getting re-elected in their districts … that’s nothing new, for either party.
Dave – “fascist?” LOL really?
Amazing how some conservative leaning politicos can label him a ‘socialist’ … and you might volley-in ‘fascist’ for consideration. Those terms, are not at all, interchangeable. Amazing. Well, not really.
Look, I’m no obama devotee … i think much of what he’s done is DEPLORABLE. But, I’ll jump in on this particular thread to his defense. My initial linking above to the slate article, was to simply point out that john’s supposition wasn’t so very … ‘out of the blue (state)’.
6 March 2013 @ 8:54 am
All of the labels; conservative, liberal, socialist, Nazi, fascist… have become completely meaningless.
Obama supported many specific policy positions originally put forward by Republicans. His economic “understanding” is that of a moderate Republican.
He is with the mainstream on abortion and gay marriage, which to the modern Republican party makes him sonewhere to the left of Satan, but every non-unhinged summary of his views makes him a Rockefeller Republican.
6 March 2013 @ 9:06 am
>He is with the mainstream on abortion and gay marriage …
Really? According to which polls?
Approval of same-sex marriage flipped about the same time Obama did, but Obama is way out of the mainstream on abortion. Virtually every Democrat is and must be to get elected. Abortion is a sacred value to Democrats and has nothing to do with popular opinion.
Whether more people are “pro life” or “pro choice” has flipped from time to time, but a sizable majority has always wanted restrictions on abortion that Democrats steadfastly refuse.
6 March 2013 @ 6:46 pm
As you say, it depends on the polls.