Barth's picture

    Post Partisanship

    A friend, not usually one to be overtaken by excessive enthusiasm,said, during the few days after the 2008 election, that it meant that the United States was finally entering the post-racial period we thought might come about after the end of the civil war, after Brown v Board of Education, or, at the very least, after the enactment of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of the mid 1960s and the abolition of the poll tax. We may be on our way there but, at least so far, we have not come close to that day, despite the election of President Obama.

    The post-partisan era that the President believes in is not as close to the horizon and it remains uncertain whether it is such a good idea anyhow. After all, things work best when what government does is based on a robust debate about the alternatives, rather than some royal personage simply announcing what fits their fancy. What we have today is neither, though. We have, as has become increasingly obvious, rational debate trumped by made up facts, gossip, and winks and nods suggesting a knowledge of secret truths which are, actually, false. As the wise and observant Kurt Andersen put it today in the Times:

    the most troubling thing about [Texas Governor Rick] Perry (and Michele Bachmann and so many more), what’s new and strange and epidemic in mainstream politics, is the degree to which people inhabit their own Manichaean make-believe worlds. They totally believe their vivid fictions.

    With that as the basis of our politics, the idea that people will set aside their preconceived goals for the benefit of the country is almost absurd. One thing is clear and undebatable: talking about it does not make it so. Hence, this now oft viewed clip when the President told Mark Ambinder last December about how he expected the debt ceiling to be raised, should be seen as a lesson learned:

    Look, here’s my expectation -- and I’ll take John Boehner at his word -- that nobody, Democrat or Republican, is willing to see the full faith and credit of the United States government collapse, that that would not be a good thing to happen. And so I think that there will be significant discussions about the debt limit vote. That’s something that nobody ever likes to vote on. But once John Boehner is sworn in as Speaker, then he’s going to have responsibilities to govern. You can’t just stand on the sidelines and be a bomb thrower.

    Equally certain---or at least virtually so---is the idea that the massive stimulus fueled by government spending, "investment" as the President likes to call it, which our economy desperately needs, will not be enacted in the near future. That is what has the stock market in free fall and why Standard and Poors issued its foolish and ridiculous downgrade of the nation's credit rating. Republicans have decided that their electoral success is dependent on a poor economy and are determined to make certain that is so. After all, the New Deal prevented them from controlling any house of Congress for over forty years except for two slight blips in the 1950s. Fool me once, as a President, a fool himself, once said.

    Indeed, it was former Senator Groucho Marx who famously described the basic policy of the Republican Party with respect to anything a President from the other party might propose:

     

     

    So, if nothing is possible, why propose anything at all? The White House sucked all of us in the other day---including the guy scribbling this crap---by its flamboyant leak last Sunday about a supposed "debate" in the White House about doing nothing because

    Mr. Obama and his aides are skeptical that voters will reward bold proposals if those ideas do not pass Congress. It is their judgment that moderate voters want tangible results rather than speeches.

    This article accomplished what, at least this chastened blogger thinks, it intended. It provoked screaming, yelling and gnashing of teeth, including the ones facing this computer screen but an understanding that proposals which cannot be enacted nonetheless serve a purpose.

    What we have heard so far is not, in Christine Romer's words, "cut it." Yes, it is true that much of what the President actually says and proposes does not get publicized, but the idea that an extension of the so-called "payroll tax holiday," trade agreements with foreign countries and patent law reform (whatever that is) is going to have any real impact is nothing more than a sad joke. To hear David Axelrod contentiously tell Bob Schieffer a couple of weeks back that he had listed

    five things that we can do right away that would have a positive impact on the economy

    based on the same tepid half measures ("infrastructure bank"?) which, though useful, are not the kind of thing we need or even want to hear, is to hear people who do not have a clue just fumbling along. Surely they have a better and bigger plan and are just low balling us until they announce it with a big flourish. Maybe the two ideas we heard floating around have some merit or would if tweaked a bit, Joe Nocera's "fund" to encourage small businesses to hire (though it has been rightly asked why, even with incentives, businesses would hire people to make and sell things when there is no market for such purchases), or the Maddow propagated Steve Benen idea to "approve" what ever stimulus crap Republican members of Congress have themselves proposed for their own districts, on the perhaps wrongheaded view that they cannot oppose what they themselves have demanded (extended perhaps to also include projects proposed by Democratic members as well). Maybe they don't have merit. Something, though, bigger and better than what we have seen needs to be put before us. It does.

    The always crucial Rachel Maddow presented a basis for hope yet again that the President understands this. She reported that, while on vacation, the President is apparently reading Rick Pearlstein's book Nixonland (which the rest of us might read, too, were it not for the $5 more than usual price that is required to purchase it as a Kindle book). More significantly, she mentioned an article Pearlstein published in his usual haunt, Time magazine, in which he gently explains the part of his book that the President should take to heart:

    It concerns the two major axes upon which major national elections get fought. Sometimes they become battles over the cultural and social anxieties that ordinary Americans suffer. Other times they are showdowns about middle-class anxieties when the free market fails. Normally, in the former sort of election, Republicans win. In the latter, Democrats do — as we saw in 2008, when the tide turned after John McCain said “the fundamentals of the economy are strong.

    Consider 1960. Even with all that ­famous 1950s prosperity, 1959 saw a recession. Richard Nixon blamed his defeat on Dwight D. Eisenhower’s failure to use government to subdue it. John F. Kennedy, meanwhile, enhanced New Deal programs like Social Security — and a promise to extend that legacy with ­Medicare was central to his appeal. People remember the U.S.’s first televised presidential debate for the contrast between JFK’s cool and a frantic and sweaty Nixon. What’s forgotten is what made Nixon so frantic: Kennedy’s unanswerable argument that Democrats had created those programs while Republicans opposed them.

    Indeed. This, Mr. President, is the point. Having not yet reached the valhalla where national interest trumps partisan politics, voters expect a president who runs as a Democrat to defend what that party accomplished and to bring those programs forward. They further expect the Republican Party, the party of Ronald Reagan to oppose those efforts. You cannot rise above that cloud and it is foolish to try to do that.

    You can say that things have changed since FDR and can even claim---quite falsely---that President Kennedy was all words with nothing to show for them. Jon Stewart, though, proved all of that to be pointless. The arguments that gave the party of FDR control of Congress for decades after the New Deal are quite applicable today and easy to state: Watch and this, too.

    There is little question that President Obama will be re-elected. (Oh, for shame. How can you say that? Look at his poll ratings.) Much of his declining popularity is from disaffected liberals, all of whom will vote for him when the time comes, as will independents who have seen what's going on and are not ready for any of these Republican candidates.

    Unless, though, he is elected with a sweeping and real Democratic majority, which will not happen unless he explains why his election alone will not solve any of the monumental problems facing us, we will waste more time and slide further into oblivion.

    Keep reading, Mr. President. You apparently read a lot of FDR books before taking office but found them to be inapplicable to our current times. It is time to reconsider that view.

    Comments

    I think the Ramones capture the tone better than Groucho.



    Mr. Obama and his aides are skeptical that voters will reward bold proposals if those ideas do not pass Congress. It is their judgment that moderate voters want tangible results rather than speeches.

    There is a deep truth to this, even if the FDR groupies don't won't to see that reality. 


    Don't think so and the 2010 elections may agree with the FDR groupies.  A reasonably full set of accomplishments were seen as insignificant because the President did not defend his positions.  The loudest voices were the ones denouncing "Obamacare" even if they no longer tried to push the death panels meme and there was really nobody who wanted to defend it.

    In an atmosphere such as this where one party just says no, they need to be called on it and punished for it.  Acceding to their demands, just to get something passed is not something people will fight to maintain.

    Exhibit A: is, of course, President Truman's attack on the do nothing Congress.  He had accomplished little (other than being in the big chair when the war ended) and was president over the wrenching return to a peacetime economy but he fought hard and, against all odds, won.


    One difference between the days of FDR/Truman and Obama/? is that the today the President is associated much more with his or her Party.  There was a time when the president was seen as...well...the president.  Not a symbolic representation of an ideology from one or the other side of the aisle.  There was a time when the president spoke (on the radio or tv), people stopped and listened regardless of their political leanings.  A speech then is different than it is today.

    People are not looking for anyone to be punished (they're basically blaming everyone in DC regardless of the letter next to their name).  What they want is something to get done.  The people are tired of words.


    Your first paragraph says a lot, and to a great extent, it is so that the President is no longer seen as the national leader, just one, and mainly the leader of a political party. 

    I am not sure that the usually stupid American people are unable to see why nothing has been done.


    Currently, the GOP wish-list-for-the-Presidency is teeming with candidates all trying to prove they're more of a nay-sayer of common sense than the other wanna-be candidates. And the GOP base is lapping it up like a puppy with a bowl of milk all to itself.

    That's a difficult dilemma for Obama and the Democrats to overcome when faced with the structural breakdown the country has been straddled with since the waning days of the 2nd Bu$h administration. What's more interesting is the GOPer's have been successful in taking a short position on the US economy ... and it looks as if they're going to clean the Democrat's clocks in 2012.

    So the question is ... how can the GOpers be so successful with the public when they blatantly make statements their intent is to run the economy into the ground which in turns destroys the accumulated wealth of the public who put them into office in the first place? I'm amazed so many people are willing to sacrifice their financial well-being as well as those of their neighbors simply based on political ideological  principles.

    What has been missing from the legislative stew is a strong herb that gives a distinct flavor everyone can recognize ... a herb that gives the stew a taste people from any political ideology can recognize and accept as palatable. It may not be savoring to some, but it will meet the basic requirement as sustenance ... when faced with the alternative - starvation, which is were we're at currently.

    As the Master Chef, Obama has only been adding pinches of salt and pepper to the stew. Seems he's deaf to the complains from his diner patrons the courses being served so far have been too bland from one side of the dining room while the other side complaints the meat is too rancid. Perhaps he needs to create another Cabinet post and nominate Martha Stewart to it?

    IMO, Obama is too timid to use stronger spices to enhance the legislation in Congress. Whereas, Bu$h didn't give a rat's ass because he knew the GOPer controlled Congress would rubber stamp whatever he sent them. And when the Democrats regained control, what he sent them gave them no choice to discuss or debate issues ... financial meltdown of 2008 for example. Note that in the first two years of Obama's presidency, the Democrat controlled Congress proved to be inept at handling the basic needs of the President, the Party and the public they served ... they totally lacked the party discipline the GOP's had and what they did pass was as messy as a botched abortion ... both fetus and mother died.

    While I understand the reason behind the drive for bipartisanship, Obama doesn't grasp the fact that for bipartisanship to succeed, the other party has to acknowledge the need to set aside political ideology and work for the common good of all. The GOPer's realized at the get-go Obama was leaving himself wide open for a political assult and they haven't let up since ... bipartisanship died on the first wave of attacks, yet Obama refuses to believe it's dead.

    Obama may get re-elected, however, I fail to see the point other than if he looses there will be one hell of a bat-shit-crazy person sitting in the White House. But there will be one there 2016 if he insists on keeping the ship of state on the same course so does it really matter when?


    Don't know about the cleaning of the clock thing, http://www.pollingreport.com/cong2012.htm, but your last paragraph is, it seems to me, the point.


    As I said earlier on ...

    ... the Democrat controlled Congress proved to be inept at handling the basic needs of the President, the Party and the public they served ... they totally lacked the party discipline the GOP's had and what they did pass was as messy as a botched abortion ... both fetus and mother died.

    There's a lot of people who were counting on both Obama and the Democrats to at least put up a good fight even if it meant taking a few lumps and not getting every thing. Instead, there wasn't even a shoving match over the issues and too much was sacrificed without anything gained in return.

    I can see sacrificing wants, needs and desires from what I believe are issues that need to be addressed for the common good of all, however, when sacrifices are made on one side and the other side of the aisle doesn't surrender a single issue, then I begin to wonder if I've entered a political Twilight Zone.

    Obama and the Democrats are going to have to work harder than they've ever had if they're interested in my vote in 2012. That means they're going to have to take a firm stand on the issues and be willing to fight tooth and nail.


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